The Concert Fantasia, Third Piano Concerto, and Andante and Finale are all 'salvage jobs' derived from an abandoned Symphony in E flat that Tchaikovsky worked on in 1892-93.
Composition History
Tchaikovsky's famous First Piano Concerto was written without an apparent commission or performance prospects, and with a dauntingly virtuosic solo part.
Compositional Technique
Tchaikovsky's Second Piano Concerto features solo violin and cello enjoying equal prominence with the piano in its slow movement, which was the composer's favorite.
Composer Biography
Tchaikovsky did not initially show special talent as a pianist and worked in the Ministry of Justice before becoming one of the first students at the St. Petersburg Conservatory.
Composition History
The First Piano Concerto was initially criticized by Nikolay Rubinstein, Tchaikovsky's boss at the Moscow Conservatoire, for being 'hackneyed, awkward and clumsy'.
Performer Biography
Oleg Marshev, the pianist on this recording, is a direct representative of the fifth generation of Russian pianists since Liszt, through his teachers and their lineage.
Compositional Technique
The now-familiar 'pile-driving chords' at the opening of the First Piano Concerto's first movement were a later revision, possibly influenced by Alexander Ziloti and Serge Rachmaninoff.
