World Premiere: October 25, 1875
Last HSO Performance: December 2, 2018
Instrumentation: 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, timpani and strings
Duration: 32 minutes

At the end of 1874, Tchaikovsky began a piano concerto with the hope of having a success great enough to allow him to leave his irksome teaching post at the Moscow Conservatory. By late December, he had largely sketched out the work, and sought the advice of Nikolai Rubinstein, Director of the Moscow Conservatory and an excellent pianist. Tchaikovsky reported the interview in a letter: “On Christmas Eve 1874, Nikolai asked me to play the Concerto. We agreed to it. After I played through the work, there burst forth from Rubinstein’s mouth a mighty torrent of words. It appeared that my Concerto was utterly worthless, absolutely unplayable; the piece as a whole was bad, trivial, vulgar.” Tchaikovsky was furious and made only one change in the score: he obliterated the name of the original dedicatee — Nikolai Rubinstein — and substituted that of the virtuoso pianist Hans von Bülow, who was performing Tchaikovsky’s piano pieces across Europe. Bülow gladly accepted the dedication and asked to program the premiere on his upcoming American tour. The Concerto created such a sensation when it was first heard, in Boston on October 25, 1875, that Bülow played it on 139 of his 172 concerts that season.

The Concerto opens with a sweeping introductory melody. Following a decrescendo and a pause, the piano presents the snapping main theme. (Tchaikovsky said that this curious melody was inspired by a tune he heard sung by a blind beggar at a street fair.) The clarinet announces the lyrical second theme. The outer sections of the second movement’s three-part structure (A–B–A) are based on a languid melody introduced by the flute; the central episode uses a swift, balletic melody. A crisp rhythmic motive presented at the beginning of the finale dominates much of the movement. To balance the vigor of this music, a romantic melody is given by the violins. The two themes contend until the Concerto comes to its rousing close.