All I want for Christmas is to have
my mentor and roommate completely trash my piano
concerto.....
At this most festive time of year,
it behooves us at Pianonoise to continue our series
about how legendary composers spent their Christmases.
Today we look at the yuletide of one Peter Illyich
Tchaikovsky, who...
What? You aren't dying to know this?
Actually, the story is fairly well
known, at least if you attend symphony concerts and
read the program notes. For the other 99 hundredths of
you, perhaps you will be touched, maybe inspired in
some way by the events which are about to unfold in
the telling. But believe me, dewey-eyed romantics, the
snow falling outside the window at the Moscow
conservatory is about the only thing about this story
that is not ugly. So for those who do not want their
Christmas cheer interrupted by a harsh dose of (albeit
someone else's) reality, or for children under 10, we
recommend skipping this page and watching some nice
dancing
hamsters for a few minutes instead.
We'll wait.
For those of you intrepid souls who
wish to continue, here are the sordid facts:
Tchaikovsky had just written his
first piano concerto. This roughly 40 minute work for
piano solo and orchestra had taken him about a month
to write. Being the quintessential Romantic artist,
the whole episode probably cost him a great deal of
spiritual travail.
Tchaikovsky had attained the very
ripe age of 34 by the time of our story. That makes
him old, at least according to one of my sources.
While I was doing some fact checking on the internet
(blimey!) I came across a site that suggested our poor
composer was not having the sort of successes he had
had when young, that perhaps he was losing his verve
and gusto. Given that I too am in my 30s, I completely
understand. My minute waltz gains a second or two
every year.
Regardless of where he was in his
career, he had done something new. And, not being a
pianist, he needed (or thought he needed) a pianist's
opinion of his work. So upon completion, he took it to
the esteemed Nicolai Rubinstein, pianist legendaire,
brother of Anton, the founder and head of the new
Moscow conservatory, who had persuaded Tchaikovsky to
exchange one snow filled city for another by leaving
St. Petersburg and setting forth on a new adventure by
becoming a professor of composition at this same
institution.
It made sense for the two to meet in
a room at the conservatory. Why they chose Christmas
Eve is anyone's guess.
Picture it. The snow falling fast
and furiously outside (and probably inside as well, in
some spots), the merciless cold of the Russian winter
numbing the fingers of the two men as they huddled
over their respective pianos, and performed, for the
first time, what was to become one of the most
celebrated piano concertos to come out of the 19th
century. Well, apparently, the composer played (at one
piano) and Rubinstein listened. Maybe he left the
orchestral parts to the imagination (they had
apparently not been finished anyway) or filled in some
on the same instrument. The documentary evidence says
nothing about them performing a 2-piano version
wherein a 2nd pianist plays the orchestra's parts. I
bring this up because I always assumed that is what
they did, since it is such an imbedded custom at music
conservatories these days. Evidently Rubinstein didn't
sight-read a note. What a baby.
The composer played through his
first (15 minute) movement. He waited to hear what
Rubinstein had to say. Nothing. Apparently he wanted
to experience it whole before he gave it a good
sendoff. Or give it another chance by hearing the 2nd
and 3rd movements. We'll never know, except that it
made the composer quite annoyed. We do know what
happened next, at least through Tchaikovsky's eyes,
because he wrote about the incident to his brother
Modeste. In an oft quoted letter we get the tenor of
Rubinstein's reaction. One final warning: he doesn't
mince words or damn with faint praise:
"'Well?' I said, and stood
up. There burst forth from Rubinstein's mouth a
mighty torrent of words. He spoke quietly at
first; then he waxed hot, and at last he
resembled Zeus hurling thunderbolts. It appeared
that my Concerto was utterly worthless,
absolutely unplayable; passages were so
commonplace and awkward that they could not be
improved; the piece as a whole was bad, trivial,
vulgar. I had stolen this from that one and that
from this one; so only two or three pages were
good for anything, while the others should be
wiped out or radically rewritten. I cannot
produce for you the main thing: the tone in
which he said all this. An impartial bystander
would necessarily have believed that I was a
stupid, ignorant, conceited note-scratcher, who
was so impudent as to show his scribble to a
celebrated man." |
This did not go over well with
Tchaikovsky, as you can imagine. Once Rubinstein's
friend had cooled down a bit, Nicolai tried to explain
a bit more constructively how the composer might
change things to improve the concerto, but Tchaikovsky
was not interested. He would not change a single note.
He did change one small item however. The concerto
would no longer be dedicated to Nicolai Rubinstein!
This must have seemed like a real
ambush to Peter Illyich. Nicolai Rubinstein had, up to
this point, been a real supporter of Tchaikovsky's
music, on stage and in print. When his younger brother
founded the Moscow conservatory, Nicolai roomed with
the new professor, who had once been his student in
St. Petersburg, and championed his music as warmly as
he could.
Oh, yes. The part about being
roommates. History doesn't record this part (that I
know of) but you can just imagine the arguments over
whose turn it was to go grocery shopping after that.
What could have caused Rubinstein's
reaction? Was it jealousy? Was it some sort of
domestic annoyance that flared into a professional
spat? Had he eaten some bad fish that morning? Was he
honestly revolted by the piece, disgusted with its
innovations, or uncomprehending of its style? Or did
Tchaikovsky play it badly? He does not appear to have
been that much of a pianist, and a bad performance can
make a huge difference in a first impression.
We'll never know.
History does record that the new
dedicatee was one Han von Bulow. Bulow was a
celebrated pianist who just happened to be making a
tour of America at the time and took the concerto with
him to Boston. As a result, Tchaikovsky got his music
performed in America for the first time, and the
audiences loved it. They've been loving it ever since.
Practically every major symphony orchestra in the
country plays it every couple of years. Tonight, as I
hurried home to finish this article, it was on the
radio.
There are some lessons we could draw
from this story. 1) people are not always nice, even
at Christmas, 2) it doesn't matter how good you are at
something, someone will tell you you suck, 3) even the
professionals don't always know what they are talking
about. If one of these three items helps you through a
rough spot, help yourself. They are in the public
domain.
Incidentally, Rubinstein later
changed his mind and went on to play the concerto, and
to think well of it. So this story has a happy ending
after all.
Gag me.
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