2nd piano concerto (Tchaikovsky)

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The 2nd Piano Concerto Op. 44 in G major was composed by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky in 1880/81 and dedicated it to Nikolai Rubinstein , who died almost at the same time as the premiere. It was premiered on March 11, 1881 in Moscow under the direction of his brother Anton Rubinstein and with Tchaikovsky student Sergei Taneyev at the piano. On November 12, 1881, the concert conducted by Theodore Thomas with the pianist Madeleine Schiller made its American debut at Carnegie Hall in New York.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1893)

background

There is hardly a concert that has attempted so little to compare it with another work and yet provoked it unspokenly: the comparison with Tchaikovsky's 1st Piano Concerto in B flat minor , which began a veritable triumphant advance from Boston in 1875 . One can say that this development prevented the work of the two subsequent piano concertos. The 2nd Piano Concerto in G major was welcomed by the audience in 1882. But you came across little things: the 1st and 2nd movements were too long, the first movement in particular seemed very confusing thematically and had too many solo cadences .

Alexander Siloti and PI Tchaikovsky

The fact that the piano in the second movement, the Andante non troppo , takes a back seat and essentially accompanies two other soloists, a violinist and a cellist , also caused great astonishment . The concert was promptly arranged several times, the pianist Alexander Siloti , a cousin of Sergei Rachmaninoff , shortened the 1st movement by 24 and the 2nd by 200 bars and corrected a few tempo markings upwards, i.e. the concert became faster.

Tchaikovsky's 2nd Piano Concerto, which due to its thematic ingenuity and expressive dialogue passages between solo instrument and orchestra is a special testimony to romantic piano music, still ekes out a shadowy existence mostly as a recording on sound carriers as part of complete recordings of Tchaikovsky's piano works with orchestra. The pianist Andrej Hoteev used the original text of the concerto for his 1998 recording, added the missing passages and kept the original tempo.

The movement names of the concert are:

  • Allegro brilliant e molto vivace
  • Andante non troppo
  • Allegro con fuoco

The additives e molto vivace , non troppo and con fuoco come from Siloti.

The first sentence

The first theme in G major, a dynamic one, seems to spring less from Romanticism than from the ideal of Viennese Classicism : It is clearly structured, first in the orchestra, repeated by the piano. Each paragraph of the topic is concluded with so-called Mannheim rockets , scale-shaped ascents in sixteenth notes, which formed a classic decorative element in Mozart's time. (Tchaikovsky not only formed upswings, but also downswings)

But from bar 16, everything no longer seems to be as we know it from an exposition in the conventional sense. It continues with a slightly different motif in E minor. The first movement shows a total of six thematic ideas, namely in addition to the opening theme in G major and from bar 16 further from bar 32, 78, 147 and 295. Underneath is of course the obligatory second theme. Looking at the number of bars, it looks as if Tchaikovsky has built a little math into the first movement; each new topic starts after roughly doubling the number of bars.

And there is another special feature: all six topics are closely interwoven. Tchaikovsky has examined a certain section of the theme in G major from ever new perspectives in the other sections. It is the combination of the 1-quarter / 2-eighth / 1-half note movement in the interval of one second that appears as a formation in all themes. (In the theme from bar 147 it is modified to the extent that Tchaikovsky does not stick to the fixed note values, but rather to the second interval.) And as if he wanted to escape the tightness of the interval again, he always sets new, melodically far-reaching melodies for the motif Piano cadences added.

With regard to the second theme, Tchaikovsky has come up with something extraordinary: in bars 73 to 77 finally arrived in the key of D major, which is traditionally intended for the second theme in the basic key of G major, he sets a gusty orchestral chord in bar 78 with the everything is simply pulled a half tone higher. The second theme is therefore in E flat major. An introduction by the clarinet is followed by a lyrical motif that is spun in a dialogue between the piano and the flute . The recapitulation from bar 478 is preceded by a solo cadenza over the Mannheim rockets of the first theme. It (the recapitulation) is very concentrated on the first and second themes, which are presented there in the classical sense, one after the other.

The 2nd movement

The second movement in D major begins with dissonant chords that are immediately resolved, the orchestra intones them like sighs. This is followed by a solo violin, which imitates the explanatory prologue of a narrator and leads to the actual theme from bar 20. A cello, also played as a soloist, joins. The piano takes up the theme late and then contrasts it with a more passionate minor in the further course of the quiet, but then only lingers as the accompaniment of violin and cello, which have entered into a long, alternating but also interlaced dialogue.

The 3rd movement

The final movement in G major is a typical rondo with various Russian motifs, including a Cossack theme, which, due to its degree of difficulty, gives the pianist another opportunity to present his skills to the audience.

Discography

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Markus Hillenbrand: Klassika: Peter Iljitsch Tschaikowski (1840-1893): Catalog raisonné. Retrieved July 20, 2017 .
  2. ^ Radio Swiss Classic - Music Database - Musicians . In: Radio Swiss Classic . ( radioswissclassic.ch [accessed on July 20, 2017]).
  3. ↑ Markus Hillenbrand: Klassika: Peter Iljitsch Tschaikowski (1840-1893): Piano Concerto No. 2. Accessed on July 20, 2017 .
  4. ↑ discography