It’s a good thing Pyotr Tchaikovsky didn’t let rejection get to him.
The composer, well-known for his “Nutcracker” ballet score, wrote his first piano concerto and played it for his close friend, famed pianist Nikolai Rubinstein, in hopes he would give it its premiere.
But Rubinstein didn’t care for the piece at all.
“Badly written” and “beyond rescue,” the pianist called it.
Yet Tchaikovsky believed in his concerto, and found another pianist: Hans von Bülow, who performed it with a freelance orchestra under Benjamin Johnson Lang in Boston in October 1875. The concerto has since become a beloved piece, played all over the world.
This Saturday, noted pianist and educator Alexander Tutunov will join the full Port Angeles Symphony Orchestra as guest soloist. This fall concert brings the Tchaikovsky concerto together with another highly romantic masterwork, Rachmaninoff’s Second Symphony.
The orchestra, which includes musicians from Sequim and across the Olympic Peninsula, will take the stage at 7:30 p.m. after a brief pre-concert talk at 6:30 by conductor and artistic director Jonathan Pasternack. Tickets are available at portangelessymphony.org, at Port Book and News in Port Angeles and at the door of the venue: the Port Angeles High School Performing Arts Center, 304 E. Park Ave. For more information, phone the Symphony office at 360-457-5579.
Tutunov, a graduate of the Moscow Conservatory in the former Soviet Union who emigrated to the United States, is a longtime professor at Southern Oregon University in Ashland, Ore. He’s well-known to Peninsula music lovers, having joined the Port Angeles Symphony to share music from Chopin to Gershwin to Rachmaninoff to Beethoven.
“Having Alex here to play with us again is like welcoming home a dear family member,” said Pasternack.
“He is a wonderful artist and human being, and I’ve been so looking forward to playing this heartfelt music with him.”
The Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto, known for its high-drama opening, follows through with a whole story line: It has a melody based on a Ukrainian folk song; then comes a flute solo, another dancelike theme from Ukraine, and a call-and-response between the piano and the orchestra.
The Port Angeles Symphony also invites the public to its final rehearsal at 10 a.m. Saturday at the Port Angeles High School Performing Arts Center. Tickets to this rehearsal, during which listeners can watch how Pasternack prepares the orchestra for that evening’s concert, are available at portangelessymphony.org and at the door.
