Stravinsky’s electrifying ballet and internationally celebrated pianist Olga Kern performing Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto.

The Vancouver Symphony Orchestra welcomes back pianist Olga Kern to play Tchaikovsky’s Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 1. Then it is on to an amazing piece that is a true landmark music history, Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring.

The early history of Tchaikovsky's Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No.1 gave no clue of its eventual popularity. When Tchaikovsky finished it in December of 1874, he asked Nicolai Rubinstein to listen to a performance. Tchaikovsky considered Rubinstein to be the “best pianist in Moscow” and planned to dedicate the new concerto to him, so he quite naturally sought Rubinstein’s criticism. On Christmas Eve, he met Rubinstein at the Moscow Conservatory, and played through the entire concerto, which had not yet been orchestrated, while Rubinstein sat in stony silence. In a letter to his patron, Nadezda von Meck, Tchaikovsky described how, immediately after the final chord, Rubinstein launched into a scathing attack on the concerto, calling it “worthless,” “unplayable,” and “vulgar.” Deeply insulted, Tchaikovsky stormed out of the room. Rubinstein followed, and attempted to conciliate the composer by offering to perform the concerto...if Tchaikovsky would only revise the concerto according to his suggestions. Tchaikovsky answered, “I will not alter a single note! I will publish the work exactly as it is!”

While we only have Tchaikovsky’s emotional version of this incident, it is hardly surprising that he decided to dedicate the concerto to someone other than Rubinstein. When he sent a score to the German pianist-conductor Hans von Bülow, Bülow replied enthusiastically, “The ideas are so original, the form is so mature, ripe, distinguished in style...” Bülow performed the work for the first time while on tour in Boston.

The premiere of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring is infamous as the scene of a riot. An open dress rehearsal on the day before had been well-attended and uneventful, but on opening night, the jeers and catcalls began almost immediately, followed quickly by cries of “Ta guele!” (“Shut up!”). Twenty years later, Stravinsky remembered:

“During the whole performance I was at Nijinsky’s side in the wings. He was standing on a chair, screaming ‘sixteen, seventeen, eighteen’—they had their own method of counting to keep time. Naturally, the poor dancers could hear nothing by reason of the row in the auditorium and the sound of their own dance steps. I had to hold Nijinsky by his clothes, for he was furious, and ready to dash on stage at any moment and create a scandal. Diaghilev kept ordering the electricians to turn the lights on or off, hoping in that way to put a stop to the noise. That is all I can remember about that first performance.”

Why were they so upset? The riot seems to have been the work of a small group, a clacque who came determined to disrupt the performance. The main objection was probably to Nijinsky’s revolutionary choreography. (Parisians took their ballet seriously.) But according to biographer Stephen Walsh: “...the music might well have merited a riot. Certainly it was to remain the most notoriously violent score of a time when huge, noisy orchestras and harsh dissonance were more or less commonplace appurtenances of the new music.”

The 2024/25 Symphonic Series season is presented by United Grain Corporation.

Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto No. 1*

Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring

*Olga Kern, piano