Trapped in History? Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1

The arpeggiated chords on Tchaikovsky's 1879 conducting score.

On discovering Kirill Gerstein's "restored" 1879 version of Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 and listening to it repeatedly, and looking into the research, the emotional reaction is somewhat akin to the emotions involved in discovering that the person you always thought was your father, isn't your father after all. Let me explain.

For many people, myself included, this iconic and instantly engaging piano concerto has stood as the grand introduction to the world of classical music. It is a work that has the uncanny ability to imprint itself almost immediately onto our musical soul where its unforgettable melodies melt effortlessly into our memory. Therefore, it came as somewhat of a shock to discover that this consequential work as the world has heard it for the last 120 years or so, is not the Piano Concerto as Tchaikovsky intended. 

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 People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them. ~ James Baldwin

Kirill Gerstein, Photo by Marco Borggove

The story of how this restored version has come to light is on the liner notes of Gerstein's just released recording and in depth in many other places elsewhere: here and here and here for instance, and in many more places all around the internet. Some of them with musical examples if you want to hear the changes. Gerstein can't be praised enough for bringing this version to light, and the recording has come about through extensive research conducted and published through the Tchaikovsky Museum and Archive in Klin. The clinching evidence is seen in Tchaikovsky's own conducting score that he used for his last performance of the Piano Concerto in 1893, complete with his handwritten performing notations. As Gerstein states, "The fact that this score [1879 version] was conducted from by the composer right before his death further confirms the assertion that the third version [1894, published after his death] was not executed with Tchaikovsky's participation and that he did not definitively authorize further changes for publication."    

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It should also be mentioned, as documented in the article on Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 2 previously published here, that once again it was Aleksandr Ziloti, the pianist and conductor (and presumably Tchaikovsky's friend, though history is beginning to hint otherwise) who was the obscuring goblin in the way of us hearing Tchaikovsky's music as he wished it to be performed...

Be all of this as it may, how are we to respond to this new information and the transformed and restored Piano Concerto No. 1? How do we react, after all, to listening of decades of performances, both live and on recording, to this revelatory news and history-modifying new information? Suppose we were to discover that without our knowledge some well-meaning curator had decided to place a tinted blue glass over van Gogh's Starry Night in order to "strengthen" the swirling blues in the sky? Suppose we were to discover that an actor/editor, in transforming an early manuscript into print, had decided that "Now is the winter of our discontent" would play more dramatically, sound more round and poetical, if it read, "Now is the autumn of our discontent?" Of course those are just suppositions--let's take an actual example of editorial meddling, let's take a look at the difference in one of Emily Dickinson's poems, "I felt a Funeral in my Brain." The left column is from the earliest version of that famous poem edited by Higginson and Todd. The right column is as Emily Dickinson actually wrote it:

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I Felt a Funeral in my Brain

I felt a funeral in my brain,
   And mourners, to and fro,
Kept treading, treading, till it seemed
   That sense was breaking through.

And when they all were seated,
   A service like a drum
Kept beating, beating, till I thought
   My mind was going numb

And then I heard them lift a box,
   And creak across my Soul
With those same boots of lead, again.
   Then space began to toll

As all the heavens were a bell,
   And being, but an ear,
And I and Silence some strange Race
   Wrecked, solitary, here.

I felt a Funeral in my Brain,
And Mourners, to and fro,
Kept treading -- treading -- till it seemed
That Sense was breaking through --

And when they all were seated,
A Service like a Drum --
Kept beating -- beating -- till I thought
My mind was going numb --

And then I heard them lift a Box,
And creak across my Soul
With those same Boots of Lead, again.
Then Space -- began to toll

As all the Heavens were a Bell,
And Being, but an Ear,
And I and Silence some strange Race,
Wrecked, solitary, here --

And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
And I dropped down, and down --
And hit a World, at every plunge,
And Finished knowing -- then --

As you can see, although they are substantially the same, it's not only the essential addition of the delirious insight of the last stanza that makes the difference, but Emily's beats and cadences as well, signified by the dashes, and her capitalizations (signifying the "being-ness" of the words emphasized) that transform the poem into something that was not merely wise but deeply profound. The editors, as we know, were attempting to make Emily's poems more "palatable" to an audience expecting verse more conforming to the idea of a genteel "lady poet" of the late 19th century, poems to fit the conventional poetic rules of the time. The editors, without meaning to (giving them credit for doing what they indeed thought was best for the poems), did trap Emily Dickinson into a certain historical milieu--for her own good, of course.

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But, back to the opening analogy and (by a rather circuitous route) back to the point. As important and as meaningful and personally historical as Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 might be to those of us who have discovered and loved it over the past century, the glaring fact of the matter is, the way we have come to know it and love it is not the piano concerto as Tchaikovsky wrote it, and not the way he intended it to be performed and heard. Does the restored edition change the importance of the concerto we've always loved, does it make us love our experience of it any the less? No, it's become a part of us, we've grown into acquaintanceship (if not outright love-affairs) with pianists and orchestras because of it. And, finally, we don't stop loving the father who raised us, fed us, housed us, loved us, and sent us to college just because he wasn't our real father.     

What matters is the music. Gerstein and the scholars at the Tchaikovsky museum have given us what can only be called the most delightful of gifts, direct from the hands of the composer himself. It would be another thing to disregard it if the music were found wanting in any way, but it is not. The 1879 version reveals Tchaikovsky at his best in lyrical invention and imagination--the opening arpeggiated piano chords rhyming in beautiful cadence with the sinuous melody unwinding in the orchestra and not overpowering them as the 1894 edition always did.  There is, for lack of a better word, more tenderness to be found in this version, which demonstrates a concerto in exquisite balance, the orchestra and soloist in poetic dialogue. Just as Tchaikovsky intended. By all and any measure, this is an important historical rediscovery.

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I do not know Mr. Gerstein, and I have no vested interests whatsoever in connection with his recording. I'm nothing but an amateur scholar and one among many of the millions of fans of Tchaikovsky and his music. But anyone who knows the history of Tchaikovsky's music knows that he has been unfairly maligned in many ways over the past century and that his music has been all-too-often tampered with (yet more subjects for other days!).  And I'm aware there's an enormous weight of history and tradition connected to this concerto, but that selfsame love for him and his music asks that I stand up and champion this restored, 1879 version. The evidence convinces me, and history compels me to make this small effort because Tchaikovsky deserves his music to be heard as he intended and as he struggled to make it be, because Tchaikovsky's music should not be trapped in history and because the making of immortal music in this world is no small thing.