Tchaikovsky on a quiz show?

Synopsis

Imagine that you are playing for high stakes on a TV quiz show and here’s your question:

Peter Ilyitch Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 had its world premiere performance in what city?

a) Moscow

b) St. Petersburg

c) Budapest

d) Boston

Is that your final answer? If you chose d) Boston, you would have been a winner!

Tchaikovsky finished his Piano Concerto No. 1 in the early months of 1875, and the work received its very first performance on October 25 that year at the Music Hall in Boston. The orchestra was a freelance group, mostly members of the Harvard Musical Association — the Boston Symphony wouldn’t be founded until six years later. The conductor of the Tchaikovsky premiere was one B.J. Lang — hardly a name most classical music lovers would recognize today — but the soloist was world-class: the famous German pianist and conductor Hans von Bülow.

In his day, Bülow was one of the great champions of new music, and Tchaikovsky dedicated his new Piano Concerto to Bulow after his one-time teacher, Nicolai Rubinstein, a famous Russian concert pianist and conductor in his own right, had said the piece was unplayable. Von Bülow proved him wrong, and was able to telegraph Tchaikovsky from Boston that his new concerto had been a big success.

Music Played in Today's Program

Peter Ilyitch Tchaikovsky (1840-1893): Piano Concerto No. 1; Van Cliburn, piano; RCA Symphony; Kirill Kondrashin, conductor; Philips 456 748

On This Day

Births

• 1825 - Austrian composer and conductor Johann Strauss, Jr. (aka “The Younger,” or II), in Vienna

• 1838 - French composer Georges Bizet, in Paris

• 1864 - Russian composer Alexander Grechaninov, in Moscow (see Julian date: Oct. 13)

• 1923 - Australian composer Don Banks, in South Melbourne

Premieres

• 1823 - Weber: opera Euryanthe, in Vienna at the Kärtnertor Theater

• 1848 - Verdi: opera Il Corsaro (The Corsair), in Trieste at the Teatro Grande

• 1875 - Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto No. 1, at the Music Hall in Boston, by the orchestra of the Harvard Musical Association conducted by B.J. Lang, with Hans von Bülow as soloist

• 1885 - Brahms: Symphony No. 4 in Meiningen, Germany, with the composer conducting

• 1912 - R. Strauss: opera, Ariadne auf Naxos, and incidental music to Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, in Stuttgart at the Hoftheater (Kleines Haus), with the composer conducting, and vocal soloists Maria Jeritza (Ariadne), Margarethe Siems (Zerbinetta), and Hermann Jadlowker (Bacchus). A revised version of this work (with a newly composed prologue) premiered at the Vienna Court Opera on Oct. 4, 1916.

• 1923 - Milhaud: ballet, La Création du Monde," in Paris, by the Ballets Suédois at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées

• 1949 - Frank Martin: Concerto for Seven Wind Instruments, Timpani, Percussion, and Strings, by the orchestra of the Bern Musickgesellschaft, Luc Balmer conducting

• 1958 - Janácek: opera Fate (first staged performance) in Brno at the National Theater; This opera was written in 1904 and was premiered in a concert performance by the Brno Radio on September 18, 1934

• 1973 - Martinu: Violin Concerto (composed in 1932), by the Chicago Symphony, Sir Georg Solti conducting, with Josef Suk as soloist

• 1979 - Earl Kim: Violin Concerto, by the New York Philharmonic, conducted by Zubin Mehta, with Itzhak Perlman as soloist

• 1986 - Christopher Rouse: Phantasmata (first complete performance of three orchestral pieces composed 1981-85: The Evestrum of Juan de la Cruz in the Sagrada Familia, 3 A.M.; The Infernal Machine; and Bump), by the St. Louis Symphony, Leonard Slatkin conducting