Yuja Wang © Julia Wesely/Wiener Konzerthaus
Wiener Philharmoniker / Wang / Gražinytė-Tyla
Tuesday
6
May
2025
19:30
Großer Saal
Presented by
Wiener Konzerthausgesellschaft
Breakthroughs and Midsummer Nights
Its opening bars are among the most famous in music history. But the work itself had a difficult start: when Tchaikovsky presented his first piano concerto to his friend and mentor, the pianist and conservatory director Nikolai Rubinstein, he rejected it as unplayable and showered him with scathing criticism. The premiere did not take place in St. Petersburg or Moscow, but in the USA on October 25, 1874. Hans von Bülow, to whom Tchaikovsky subsequently turned, found the work enchanting and was delighted to take on the role of the pianist in Boston himself. In 2007, Yuja Wang's interpretation of this piano concerto provided her with her international breakthrough when she stepped in at short notice for Martha Argerich as soloist in a concert by the Boston Symphony Orchestra. With excerpts from Jean Sibelius' »Lemminkäinen Suite« and Raminta Šerkšnytė's »Midsummer Song«, the program includes further works from countries with White Nights. The latter evokes this natural phenomenon with harmonies that »blur like the boundaries between day and night«, creating a »kaleidoscopic spectrum of the finest sounds«, according to »Die Zeit« about the Lithuanian composer's work.
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