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Donald Macleod explores the rich vein of fairy tale and fantasy in Tchaikovsky's music. Today, a snow maiden, the Tsarina's slippers, and the "utterly worthless" 1st Piano Concerto.

In the early part of 1873, Moscow's Maly Theatre was closed for renovation. While the works were being completed, the company shared a stage with the the opera and ballet companies of the Bolshoi, which gave rise to the idea of a 'spectacular' production involving all three troupes. A fairy-tale subject was agreed on - The Snow Maiden - and Tchaikovsky was approached to write the incidental music. He completed it in record time - 19 numbers in a single month. His next project, a comic fantasy set in an imaginary Ukrainian village, took far longer to finish - 11 years. This was Vakula the Smith or, as it later became, Cherevichki, based on Gogol's play Christmas Night. Tchaikovsky came to regard it as "musically well-nigh my best opera", but sadly neither contemporary audiences nor posterity have agreed with this judgement. When Tchaikovsky played through his new piano concerto for his friend and mentor Nikolai Rubinstein, once again the reaction wasn't the one he had hoped for: "bad ... vulgar ... absolutely unplayable ... utterly worthless" - a misjudgement that must be up there with Decca turning down The Beatles. Fortunately, Tchaikovsky stuck to his guns and published his First Piano Concerto unaltered - save for the removal of the dedication to Rubinstein. The audience at its Boston premiere loved it, as audiences have continued to do ever since.

The Snow Maiden - Introduction
MDR Sinfonieorchester
Krystian Järvi, conductor

The Slippers - Act 1 scene 2 (excerpt)
Ekaterina Morosova, soprano (Oksana)
Valerij Popov, tenor (Vakula)
Orchestra e Coro del Teatro Lirico di Cagliari,
Gennadi Rozhdestvensky, conductor

Piano Concerto No 1 in B flat minor, Op 23
Denis Matsuev, piano
Mariinsky Orchestra
Valery Gergiev, conductor

Produced by Chris Barstow.