Piano Concerto No. 1 (Tchaikovsky)

The Piano Concerto No. 1 in B♭ minor, Op. 23, was composed by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky between November 1874 and February 1875.^[1] It was revised in 1879 and in 1888. It was first performed on October 25, 1875, in Boston by Hans von Bülow after Tchaikovsky's desired pianist, Nikolai Rubinstein, criticised the piece. Rubinstein later withdrew his criticism and became a fervent champion of the work. It is one of the most popular of Tchaikovsky's compositions and among the best known of all piano concerti.^[2]

From 2021 to 2022, it served as the sporting anthem of the Russian Olympic Committee as a substitute of the country's actual national anthem as a result of the doping scandal that prohibits the use of its national symbols.

Tchaikovsky revised the concerto three times, the last in 1888, which is the version usually played. One of the most prominent differences between the original and final versions is that in the opening section, the chords played by the pianist, over which the orchestra plays the main theme, were originally written as arpeggios. Tchaikovsky also arranged the work for two pianos in December 1874; this edition was revised in 1888.^[3]

There is some confusion about to whom the concerto was originally dedicated. It was long thought that Tchaikovsky initially dedicated the work to Nikolai Rubinstein, and Michael Steinberg writes that Rubinstein's name is crossed off the autograph score.^[4] But in his Tchaikovsky biography, David Brown writes that the work was never dedicated to Rubinstein.^[5] Tchaikovsky did hope that Rubinstein would perform the work at one of the 1875 concerts of the Russian Musical Society in Moscow. For this reason he showed the work to him and another musical friend, Nikolai Hubert, at the Moscow Conservatory on December 24, 1874/January 5, 1875, three days after finishing it.^[6] Brown writes, "This occasion has become one of the most notorious incidents in the composer's biography."^[7] Three years later, Tchaikovsky shared what happened with his patroness, Nadezhda von Meck:

I played the first movement. Not a single word, not a single remark! If you knew how stupid and intolerable is the situation of a man who cooks and sets before a friend a meal, which he proceeds to eat in silence! Oh, for one word, for friendly attack, but for God's sake one word of sympathy, even if not of praise. Rubinstein was amassing his storm, and Hubert was waiting to see what would happen, and that there would be a reason for joining one side or the other. Above all I did not want sentence on the artistic aspect. My need was for remarks about the virtuoso piano technique. R's eloquent silence was of the greatest significance. He seemed to be saying: "My friend, how can I speak of detail when the whole thing is antipathetic?" I fortified myself with patience and played through to the end. Still silence. I stood up and asked, "Well?" Then a torrent poured from Nikolay Grigoryevich's mouth, gentle at first, then more and more growing into the sound of a Jupiter Tonans. It turned out that my concerto was worthless and unplayable; passages were so fragmented, so clumsy, so badly written that they were beyond rescue; the work itself was bad, vulgar; in places I had stolen from other composers; only two or three pages were worth preserving; the rest must be thrown away or completely rewritten. "Here, for instance, this—now what's all that?" (he caricatured my music on the piano) "And this? How can anyone ..." etc., etc. The chief thing I can't reproduce is the tone in which all this was uttered. In a word, a disinterested person in the room might have thought I was a maniac, a talented, senseless hack who had come to submit his rubbish to an eminent musician. Having noted my obstinate silence, Hubert was astonished and shocked that such a ticking off was being given to a man who had already written a great deal and given a course in free composition at the Conservatory, that such a contemptuous judgment without appeal was pronounced over him, such a judgment as you would not pronounce over a pupil with the slightest talent who had neglected some of his tasks—then he began to explain N.G.'s judgment, not disputing it in the least but just softening that which His Excellency had expressed with too little ceremony.

I was not only astounded but outraged by the whole scene. I am no longer a boy trying his hand at composition, and I no longer need lessons from anyone, especially when they are delivered so harshly and unfriendlily. I need and shall always need friendly criticism, but there was nothing resembling friendly criticism. It was indiscriminate, determined censure, delivered in such a way as to wound me to the quick. I left the room without a word and went upstairs. In my agitation and rage I could not say a thing. Presently R. enjoined me, and seeing how upset I was he asked me into one of the distant rooms. There he repeated that my concerto was impossible, pointed out many places where it would have to be completely revised, and said that if within a limited time I reworked the concerto according to his demands, then he would do me the honor of playing my thing at his concert. "I shall not alter a single note," I answered, "I shall publish the work exactly as it is!" This I did.^[8]

Tchaikovsky biographer John Warrack writes that, even if Tchaikovsky were restating the facts in his favor,

it was, at the very least, tactless of Rubinstein not to see how much he would upset the notoriously touchy Tchaikovsky. ... It has, moreover, been a long-enduring habit for Russians, concerned about the role of their creative work, to introduce the concept of "correctness" as a major aesthetic consideration, hence to submit to direction and criticism in a way unfamiliar in the West, from Balakirev and Stasov organizing Tchaikovsky's works according to plans of their own, to, in our own day, official intervention and the willingness of even major composers to pay attention to it.^[9]

Warrack adds that Rubinstein's criticisms fell into three categories. First, he thought the writing of the solo part was bad, "and certainly there are passages which even the greatest virtuoso is glad to survive unscathed, and others in which elaborate difficulties are almost inaudible beneath the orchestra."^[10] Second, he mentioned "outside influences and unevenness of invention ... but it must be conceded that the music is uneven and that [it] would, like all works, seem the more uneven on a first hearing before its style had been properly understood."^[11] Third, the work probably sounded awkward to a conservative musician such as Rubinstein.^[11] While the introduction in the "wrong" key of D♭ (for a piece supposed to be in B♭ minor) may have taken Rubinstein aback, Warrack explains, he may have been "precipitate in condemning the work on this account or for the formal structure of all that follows."^[11]

Brown writes that it is not known why Tchaikovsky next approached German pianist Hans von Bülow to premiere the work,^[5] although he had heard Bülow play in Moscow earlier in 1874 and been taken with his combination of intellect and passion; Bülow likewise admired Tchaikovsky's music.^[12] Bülow was preparing to go on a tour of the United States. This meant that the concerto would be premiered half a world away from Moscow. Brown suggests that Rubinstein's comments may have deeply shaken Tchaikovsky, though he did not change the work and finished orchestrating it the following month, and that his confidence in the piece may have been so shaken that he wanted the public to hear it in a place where he would not have to personally endure any humiliation if it did not fare well.^[5] Tchaikovsky dedicated the work to Bülow, who called it "so original and noble".

The first performance of the original version took place on October 25, 1875, in Boston, conducted by Benjamin Johnson Lang with Bülow as soloist. Bülow had initially engaged a different conductor, but they quarrelled, and Lang was brought in on short notice.^[13] According to Alan Walker, the concerto was so popular that Bülow was obliged to repeat the Finale, a fact that Tchaikovsky found astonishing.^[14] Although the premiere was a success with the audience, the critics were not so impressed. One wrote that the piece was "hardly destined ..to become classical".^[15] George Whitefield Chadwick, who was in the audience, recalled in a memoir years later: "They had not rehearsed much and the trombones got in wrong in the 'tutti' in the middle of the first movement, whereupon Bülow sang out in a perfectly audible voice, The brass may go to hell".^[16] The work fared much better at its performance in New York City on November 22, under Leopold Damrosch.^[17]

Lang appeared as soloist in a complete performance of the concerto with the Boston Symphony Orchestra on February 20, 1885, under Wilhelm Gericke.^[13] Lang previously performed the first movement with the Boston Symphony Orchestra in March 1883, conducted by Georg Henschel, in a concert in Fitchburg, Massachusetts.

The Russian premiere took place on November 13 [O.S. November 1] 1875^[18] in Saint Petersburg, with the Russian pianist Gustav Kross and the Czech conductor Eduard Nápravník. In Tchaikovsky's estimation, Kross reduced the work to "an atrocious cacophony".^[19] The Moscow premiere took place on December 3 [O.S. November 21] 1875, with Sergei Taneyev as soloist. The conductor was Rubinstein, the man who had comprehensively criticised the work less than a year earlier.^[12] Rubinstein had come to see its merits, and played the solo part many times throughout Europe. He even insisted that Tchaikovsky entrust the premiere of his Second Piano Concerto to him, and the composer would have done so had Rubinstein not died.^{[citation needed]} At that time, Tchaikovsky considered rededicating the work to Taneyev, who had performed it splendidly, but ultimately the dedication went to Bülow.

In 1875, Tchaikovsky published the work in its original form,^[20] but in 1876 he happily accepted advice on improving the piano writing from German pianist Edward Dannreuther, who had given the London premiere of the work,^[21] and from Russian pianist Alexander Siloti several years later. The solid chords played by the soloist at the opening of the concerto may in fact have been Siloti's idea, as they appear in the first (1875) edition as rolled chords, somewhat extended by the addition of one or sometimes two notes which made them more inconvenient to play but without significantly altering the sound of the passage. Various other slight simplifications were also incorporated into the published 1879 version. Further small revisions were undertaken for a new edition published in 1890.

The American pianist Malcolm Frager unearthed and performed the original version of the concerto.^[22][when?]

In 2015, Kirill Gerstein made the world premiere recording of the 1879 version. It received an ECHO Klassik award in the Concerto Recording of the Year category. Based on Tchaikovsky's conducting score from his last public concert, the new critical urtext edition was published in 2015 by the Tchaikovsky Museum in Klin, tying in with Tchaikovsky's 175th anniversary and marking 140 years since the concerto's world premiere in Boston in 1875. For the recording, Gerstein was granted special pre-publication access to the new urtext edition.^[23]

After Russia was banned from all major sporting competitions from 2021 to 2023 by the World Anti-Doping Agency as a result of a doping scandal, those cleared to compete were allowed to represent the Russian Olympic Committee or Russian Paralympic Committee at the 2020 Summer Olympics and Paralympics,^[a] and at the 2022 Winter Olympics and Paralympics. Instead of the national anthem of Russia, a fragment of the concerto was used as the "Anthem of the Russian Olympic Committee" when athletes competing under the banner were awarded a gold medal. The introduction to the first movement had been played during the closing ceremony of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, and during the final leg of the Olympic torch relay during the Opening Ceremony of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow.^{[24][25][26][27]}

The work is scored for two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets in B♭, two bassoons, four horns in F, two trumpets in F, three trombones (two tenor, one bass), timpani, solo piano, and strings.

The concerto follows the traditional form of three movements:

A standard performance lasts between 30 and 36 minutes, the majority of which is taken up by the first movement.