VFO / PAAVO JÄRVI / KHATIA BUNIATISHVILI

If Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto is a classic of the repertoire, this was not always the case: Nikolai Rubinstein, who was to be the dedicatee, initially judged the music so bad that the composer would have been better off starting the work from scratch! This is reminiscent of the fate of the equally famous Violin Concerto, which Leopold Auer also refused to create for similar reasons. In the end, these reactions highlight what sets Tchaikovsky apart from his contemporaries, and how he succeeded in bringing a new touch to the concerto genre. By creating solo episodes that were emotionally more complex than those to which audiences were accustomed, and by not hesitating to develop the grandiose and epic character of the orchestral parts, Tchaikovsky found his way to renew the concerto – at the same time as confusing his audience at the time.

Mahler’s First Symphony, another masterpiece of a complex gestation period, went from revision to critical failure for more than twenty years, before finally receiving the recognition it deserved in the post-war period. Today, we can only admire its narrative and orchestral abundance, and already see in some of its musical gestures what would mark subsequent generations – like the second movement, whose wild, leaping energy Shostakovich would not have denied.