Although today they rank among the leading works of the symphonic repertoire, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 and Symphony No. 5 did not have an untroubled beginning. When the composer presented his Concerto to the pianist Nikolai Rubinstein, the latter dismissed it as “trivial and clumsily written.” And yet the Concerto — with […]
