City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra

Thurs 5 Mar View Venues, Dates & Times

Music Director Kazuki Yamada and his CBSO head down the road to Coventry early this month to perform two epic works... 
Alongside Mussorgsky’s Pictures At An Exhibition, the orchestra also embrace the challenge of Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto. They are joined for the endeavour by Canadian pianist Bruce Liu.
Although nowadays one of the most famous pieces ever written for piano and orchestra, the concerto was severely criticised when Tchaikovsky first played it; his friend, Nicolai Rubinstein - his superior at the Moscow Conservatory - dealt him a crushing blow.
“It appeared that my concerto was worthless,” the composer later wrote, in recalling Rubinstein’s response, “that it was unplayable, that passages were trite, awkward, and so clumsy that it was impossible to put them right, that as a composition it was bad and tawdry... and that there were only two or three pages that could be retained, and that the rest would have to be scrapped or completely revised.”
It says much for the ultimately irrefutable quality of the concerto that the critical Rubinstein went on to become one of its biggest champions.

You may also like...