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The History in This Program
n April 26, 1891, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky disembarked the steamer La Bretagne in
New York and was greeted by a small gathering of the city’s music notables: E. Francis Hyde, president of the New York Philharmonic; Morris Reno, president of the Carnegie
Music Hall Company; and Ferdinand Mayer of the Knabe Piano Company, one the composer’s major sponsors. These men and their families would be Tchaikovsky’s tour guides
for the next few weeks, helping the composer navigate the bombardment of social engagements and the 17 daily newspapers that would cover his every move, in addition to
his central engagement: performing the inaugural concerts of Carnegie Hall.
Notably absent was Walter Damrosch, the 29-year-old conductor who had invited
Tchaikovsky in the first place. Damrosch directed the New York Symphony, which would
merge with the New York Philharmonic in 1928. He had become an early champion of
Tchaikovsky’s music, performing the U.S. Premieres of six works, including the Pathétique Symphony and the Violin Concerto. In 1887 he convinced Andrew Carnegie to put
down $2 million for a new concert hall and he was under pressure to make sure the opening sold out. It was not an easy feat: at the time 57th Street was at the northern edge of
New York’s cultural center, known more for stables and saloons than concert attractions;
there was a fear that New York society would not be willing to venture that far north.
Damrosch knew that a sure way to entice crowds was to book the increasingly popular
Tchaikovsky. He relayed an offer: $2,500 for four Carnegie Hall concerts as well as appearances in Baltimore and Philadelphia. Tchaikovsky responded: “It is so profitable and
easily done that I would be mad to lose the chance of traveling to America, a trip I have
desired to make for so long.” On his arrival the composer took an immediate liking to
Damrosch, commenting on his warm hospitality and his informal attire — he rehearsed
without a frock coat, something unheard of in Europe. In the evenings Damrosch took
Tchaikovsky out to clubs (including the Athletic Club, where Tchaikovsky admired the
pool), Delmonico’s restaurant, and visits with Andrew Carnegie, William Steinway (of
Steinway and Sons) and George Schirmer (G. Schirmer, Inc.), owner of the biggest music
store in the city.
The inaugural concert sold so well that the hall’s
management published a warning in The New York
Times to avoid scalpers with scam tickets. Tchaikovsky
spent the opening half in the Reno box, conducted his
Festival Coronation March after intermission, then listened to the end of the concert from the Hyde box. He
couldn’t sit with the Damrosches — the whole family
was onstage singing in the chorus for Berlioz’s Te Deum.
O
—The Archives
To learn more, visit the New York Philharmonic
Leon Levy Digital Archives at archives.nyphil.org
A portrait of Tchaikovsky autographed to Walter Damrosch
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Piano Concerto No. 2 in G major, Op. 44
Symphony No. 5 in E minor, Op. 64
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
hen music lovers speak of “the
Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto,” they
are referring to his First Piano Concerto,
composed in 1874–75, revised through
1889, and ubiquitous on concert programs
throughout the world. Pyotr Ilyich
Tchaikovsky would go on to compose two
further piano concertos, neither of which
achieved comparable fame.
The First had given rise to a traumatic
incident. The composer had asked Nikolai
Rubinstein, his colleague on the faculty of
the Moscow Conservatory, to read through
the work and offer his thoughts. Rubinstein rendered a scathing assessment, not
so much about the piano writing as about
the piece in general. In truth, there was
room for improvement, which is why
Tchaikovsky ended up revising the work.
Yet, even before then, Rubinstein had come
around to its strengths. He performed it as
a pianist, led it as a conductor, and taught
it to his students. Among the latter was the
pianist-composer Sergei Taneyev, who had
also been a pupil of Tchaikovsky’s.
Whatever wounds the contretemps engendered had healed by the time
Tchaikovsky wrote his Piano Concerto
No. 2 five years later and dedicated it to
none other than Nikolai Rubinstein, in
recognition of “his magnificent playing of
my First Concerto and of my [G-major]
Sonata which left me in utter rapture after
he performed it for me in Moscow.” Again
he submitted it for Rubinstein’s comments. Word came back, via Taneyev, “that
there’s absolutely nothing to change,” but
before long Rubinstein did express some
qualms. Tchaikovsky related to his patron,
Nadezhda von Meck:
W
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[Rubinstein] tells me in his opinion the
piano part appears to be too episodic, and
does not stand out sufficiently from the
orchestra. … If he is right this will be very
galling because I took pains precisely on
this, to make the solo instrument stand
IN SHORT
Born: May 7, 1840, in Votkinsk, in the district of
Viatka, Russia
Died: November 6, 1893, in St. Petersburg
Works composed and premiered: Piano
Concerto No. 2 composed October 22, 1879 to
May 10, 1880; dedicated to Nikolai Rubinstein;
premiered November 12, 1881, by the New York
Philharmonic, Theodore Thomas, conductor,
Madeline Schiller, soloist. Symphony No. 5
composed May to August 26, 1888, mostly in
Frolovskoe, outside Moscow; dedicated to
Count Théodore Avé-Lallemant, chairman of
the Committee of the Hamburg Philharmonic
Society; premiered November 17, 1888, in St.
Petersburg, with the composer conducting the
St. Petersburg Philharmonic Society; the work
had already been played in a two-piano
arrangement by Sergei Taneyev and Alexander Siloti at the Nobles’ Club in Moscow, on
November 6 of that year.
New York Philharmonic premieres and most
recent performances: Piano Concerto No. 2,
most recently played, July 12, 2012, at Bravo!
Vail in Colorado, Bramwell Tovey, conductor,
Anne-Marie McDermott, soloist. Symphony
No. 5, premiered February 8, 1890, Theodore
Thomas, conductor; most recently performed
May 26, 2014, at The Cathedral Church of
Saint John the Divine, Alan Gilbert, conductor
Estimated durations: Piano Concerto No. 2,
ca. 44 minutes; Symphony No. 5, ca. 46
minutes
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out in as much relief as possible against
the orchestral background.
Rubinstein was planning to play the premiere, but he died before that could occur
and the first performance instead took place
in America in 1881, with Theodore Thomas
conducting the New York Philharmonic.
Taneyev played the Moscow premiere six
months later, with Nikolai Rubinstein’s
brother, Anton, conducting, and he followed
up with a letter to Tchaikovsky that summarized where things stood:
Opinions about it are pretty varied, but
they all agree on this — that the first and
second movements are too long. … Few
people approve the violin and cello
solos in the second movement; they say
the piano has nothing to do in it, with
which I think one has to agree; there’s
an excessive preponderance of the other
two instruments.
The composer responded in a passiveaggressive mode, offering flowery praise for
Taneyev’s comments while regretting “that
those persons to whom it was entrusted two
years ago for critical scrutiny didn’t indicate that failing at the proper time.”
For listeners who judge a piece by its
structural tightness, Tchaikovsky rarely
stands as a model. Indeed, the Second
Piano Concerto moves along with an attitude that can seem rhapsodic, but once a
listener becomes accustomed to its flow it
is in no way illogical. The first movement
includes an extended section in which the
solo piano develops the melodic material
at length — a sort of development section
rather than a cadenza per se — and its concluding pages are splendid indeed, blossoming with striking harmonic invention
and brilliant figuration. The tempo marking of the middle movement — Andante
non troppo — implies a gait that is relaxed
without being slow. Solo violin and cello
play prominent roles in the texture, sometimes joining with the piano to prefigure,
in a way, the A-minor Piano Trio of a
decade later, a summit of the composer’s
oeuvre. One might imagine some of the
music of this leisurely movement as being
plucked from a French lyric opera. The
A Competing Edition
Another pianist got into the action of offering Tchaikovsky advice
about revising his Second Piano Concerto: Alexander Siloti, a
friend and former pupil. The composer resisted Siloti’s suggestions, saying that he “emphatically cannot agree with your cuts
and especially with your re-ordering of the first movement.” However, Siloti would not let the matter rest. Three months before he
died, Tchaikovsky wrote to his publisher, Jurgenson, to emphasize that he did not agree with Siloti’s ideas. Nonetheless, Jurgenson issued a new edition of the piece in 1897, the title page of
which declared that it was a “New edition revised and shortened
following the instructions of the author, by A. Siloti.” That meant
the piece was now competing with itself in two quite distinct versions, a state of affairs that did not help it in posterity. On the
rare occasions when this concerto is played today, it is usually
heard not in Siloti’s abbreviated re-writing but rather in the version Tchaikovsky wrote and sanctioned, as it is in this concert.
Alexander Siloti
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finale seems almost a brief afterthought in
this concerto, compact in relation to the
preceding movements and bringing the
piece to its conclusion on a note of graceful
good spirits and a full measure of charm.
It should come as no surprise that
Tchaikovsky approached his Symphony
No. 5 from a position of extreme self-doubt,
since that was nearly always his posture
vis-à-vis his incipient creations. In May
1888 he confessed in a letter to his brother
Modest that he feared his imagination had
dried up, that he had nothing more to express in music. Still, there was a glimmer of
optimism: “I am hoping to collect, little by
little, material for a symphony,” he wrote.
Tchaikovsky spent the summer of 1888
at a vacation home he had built on a
forested hillside at Frolovskoe, not far
from his home base in Moscow. The idyllic
locale apparently played a major role in
his managing to complete this symphony
in the short span of four months.
Tchaikovsky made a habit of keeping his
principal patron, Nadezhda von Meck, informed about his compositions through
detailed letters, and correspondence with
his eccentric benefactor, who based her
philanthropy on the stipulation that they
should avoid any personal contact whatsoever. The letters offer a good deal of information about how the Fifth Symphony
progressed during that summer. Tchaikovsky’s work on the symphony was already well along when he broached the
subject with von Meck on June 22:
I shall work my hardest. I am exceedingly anxious to prove to myself, as to
others, that I am not played out as a
composer. Have I told you that I intend
to write a symphony? The beginning
was difficult, but now inspiration seems
to have come. We shall see ….
His correspondence on the subject brims
with allusions to the emotional background
to this piece, which involved resignation to
fate, the designs of providence, murmurs of
doubt, and similarly dark thoughts.
Critics blasted the symphony at its premiere, due in part to the composer’s limited skill on the podium; and yet the
audience was enthusiastic. Predictably,
Tchaikovsky decided the critics must be
right. In December, he wrote to von Meck:
Having played my Symphony twice in
Petersburg and once in Prague, I have
Listen for … the Sound of Fate
The four movements of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony are unified through common reference to
a “motto theme,” which is announced by somber clarinets at the piece’s outset.
This would seem to represent the idea of Fate to which Tchaikovsky referred in his early writings
about the piece. The theme reappears often in this symphony, sometimes reworked considerably.
It causes a brutal interruption in the middle of the slow movement (a languid elegy spotlighting
the solo horn); it appears in a subdued statement by clarinets and bassoons near the end of the
graceful third movement; and in the finale this “Fate” motif is transposed from the minor mode into
the major in a gesture that sounds at least temporarily triumphant.
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come to the conclusion that it is a failure. There is something repellent in it,
some over-exaggerated color, some insincerity of fabrication which the public
instinctively recognizes. It was clear to
me that the applause and ovations referred not to this but to other works of
mine, and that the Symphony itself will
never please the public.
Elsewhere he wrote of his Fifth Symphony, “the organic sequence fails, and a
skillful join has to be made… . I cannot
complain of lack of inventive power, but I
have always suffered from want of skill in
the management of form.”
These comments reveal considerable
self-awareness; one might say that
Tchaikovsky was wrong, but for all the
right reasons. The work’s orchestral palette
is indeed colorful, despite the fact that the
composer employs an essentially lateClassical orchestra of modest proportions.
Tchaikovsky was quite on target about “the
management of form” being his weak suit;
and, indeed, the Fifth Symphony (like his
very popular First Piano Concerto) may be
viewed as something of a patchwork — the
more so when compared to the relatively
tight Fourth Symphony that had preceded
it 11 years earlier. And if Tchaikovsky was
embarrassed by the degree of overt sentiment he reached in the Fifth Symphony, it
still fell short of the emotional frontiers he
would cross in his Sixth.
“If Beethoven’s Fifth is Fate knocking at
the door,” wrote a commentator when the
piece was new, “Tchaikovsky’s Fifth is
Fate trying to get out.” It nearly does so in
a journey that threatens to culminate in a
series of climactic B-major chords. But
notwithstanding the frequent interruption of audience applause at that point,
the adventure continues to a conclusion
Unsolved Mystery
Tchaikovsky’s first thoughts about what would
become his Fifth Symphony reached back at
least to April 1888, when he jotted in a notebook
the following concept for the first movement:
Intr[oduction]. Complete resignation before
Fate — or, what is the same thing, the inscrutable designs of Providence.
Allegro. 1. Murmurs of doubt, laments, reproaches against … XXX. 2. Shall I cast myself in the embraces of faith??? A wonderful
program, if only it can be carried out.
Scholars have scratched their heads over
those remarks ever since. The triple-X business
is up for grabs. Some musicologists maintain
that it referred to Tchaikovsky’s homosexuality,
others to his gambling addiction; whatever it
stood for, it was obviously something the composer considered secret and personal. The general plan itself did not survive the process of
composition, so there is really no way it can be
reconciled with the first movement as it is
known. But at least this outline leaves no doubt
about one thing that is likely to strike most listeners: this symphony is about something,
notwithstanding the fact that Tchaikovsky
protested to his friend the Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich that the work had no
program whatsoever.
that is to some extent ambiguous: four
closing E-major chords that one may hear
as victorious but may just as easily sound
ominous.
Instrumentation: Piano Concerto No. 2
calls for two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, timpani, and strings, in addition to
the solo piano. Symphony No. 5 employs
three flutes (one doubling piccolo), two
oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four
horns, four trumpets, three trombones,
tuba, timpani, and strings.
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