By the time he composed his First Piano Concerto, Tchaikovsky was already an accomplished composer, with two symphonies, a string quartet, and two tone poems to his name. His mentors’ approval still mattered to him, however, and on December 24, 1874 (January 5, 1875, New Style), he played the concerto for Nikolai Rubinstein, whom he hoped might perform the work. As Tchaikovsky reported three years later to his patron Nadezhda von Meck, Rubinstein’s response was famously and devastatingly negative.
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…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….
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. 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…Presently R. enjoined me, and...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.
As Tchaikovsky refused to acquiesce to Rubinstein’s demands, Hans von Bülow became the concerto’s first soloist, premiering it in Boston on October 15, 1875. Unlike Rubinstein, audiences responded with immediate enthusiasm, reportedly clamoring for—and receiving—a reprise of the final movement. The Moscow premiere followed just over a month later, with Sergei Taneyev as soloist and Rubinstein himself on the podium. The mentor who had so sharply criticized the concerto less than a year earlier soon became one of its most ardent supporters.
