Photo: Marco Borggreve
The following is a portion of a blog post Kirill Gerstein wrote for The New York Review of Books:
Recently, the British pianist Stephen Hough reported on his blog that he had made “The most exciting musical discovery of [his] life: Tchaikovsky’s wrong note finally corrected.” The article questioned a note in Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto, a large-scale, virtuosic piece that makes striking use of Russian folk themes. At the start of the concerto’s slow movement, the flute plays a phrase that consists of the notes A-flat, E-flat, F, A-flat.
In his article, Hough admits that the F has always bothered him, because when the piano restates the melody a moment later, the theme has a B-flat instead of an F (A-flat, E-flat, B-flat, A-flat).
The B-flat gives the melody phrase an entirely different shape and this shape persists in nearly every other appearance of the theme. What if the F at the start of the movement was a mistake, and B-flat had been intended?
As I read Hough’s piece I became anxious. I think this F is a charming anomaly, an instance of inexplicable compositional inspiration and lovely asymmetry that greatness often displays. I feel moved when I hear this alternation between the tender innocence of the F and the heightened expressivity of the following B-flat. Still, Hough had evidence to support his hunch: he had come across a manuscript of the work held in a library in Berlin. In that score, this potentially troublesome note is crossed out in blue pencil, and corrected, in script that seemed to resemble Tchaikovsky’s, to a B-flat.
Click here to read the rest of Kirill Gerstein’s blog post, complete with musical excerpts!
Hear Kirill Gerstein perform Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto with the Houston Symphony, controversial note and all, September 12, 14, 15, 2013. Click here for tickets!
Photo: Marco Borggreve
Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto
September 12, 14, 15, 2013
Peter Oundjian, conductor
Kirill Gerstein, piano
Verdi: Overture to La Forza del Destino
Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto No. 1
Debussy: Prelude to The Afternoon of
a Faun
Respighi: Pines of Rome
To open the Centennial Classical Season, pianist Kirill Gerstein returns to Houston to captivate you with the delicate melodies and explosive fireworks of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1.The evening will come to a raucous conclusion with blazing trumpets as the Consular Army marches along the Appian Way in Respighi’s Pines of Rome.
