Brahms. Tchaikovsky

In the 1850s German audiences knew the young pianist Johannes Brahms whose repertoire included piano concerti by Mozart and Beethoven. In the early 1880s all major towns in Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire had the opportunity to hear the composer perform his First Piano Concerto in D Minor, Op. 15.
But the work was not an immediate success: the premiere in Hanover on 22 January 1859 and the concert soon afterwards in Leipzig brought Brahms little pleasure. It is known that the “extremely piercing dissonances” and “unpleasant sounds”, as Edward Bernsdorf of Signale für die musikalische Welt wrote, were dismissed by the critics. In Leipzig it was performed to no applause whatsoever. The company Breitkopf und Härtel even refused to work with the young and apparently unpromising composer.
But the fact is that the first audiences had expected typical concert music – virtuoso and undemanding in nature. Instead of this they were presented with a work of symphonic scale which has “exchanges” with Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. In the first section of the concerto there are stormy and inhuman passions, but the stunned music lovers were unable even to enjoy the Adagio – a brilliant example of Brahms’ lyricism (the composer himself said that the second section of the concerto was a portrait of his muse, Clara Schumann).

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky began work on his Second Piano Concerto in October 1879, completing it in March 1880 and dedicating it to Nikolai Grigorievich Rubinstein. Possibly the dedication contains something of a belated apology for leaving the Moscow Conservatoire of which Rubinstein was the Director.
The first section, in the style of a dazzling march, is unique in terms of the number of piano solos: the soloist is left alone nine times to perform long passages without the orchestra accompanying. In the second section, however, the violin and cello perform solos as well as the piano. Tchaikovsky only wrote for this ensemble of these three instruments on two occasions: in his Second Concerto and in Trio in Memory of a Great Artist (1881–1882), composed soon after the death of Nikolai Rubinstein. In the final rondo we have a charming fusion of folklore and romantic fantasy such as only Tchaikovsky could accomplish.
Whereas Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto was first performed in Boston, the Second was premiered in New York (12 November 1881). In Moscow, the concerto was first performed on 30 May 1882 by Sergei Ivanovich Taneyev with Anton Grigorievich Rubinstein conducting.
Anna Bulycheva