Piotr Tchaikovsky’s Third Piano Concerto and the Issue of Cyclicity
Abstract
The article examines one of Piotr Tchaikovsky’s last compositions – the Concerto for Piano and
Orchestra No. 3, its creation, comprehension and performance. The genre-related and, as a result,
the cyclic issues of this compositions not possessing univocal interpretation in contemporary
scholarly literature come out to the foreground. Having been relegated to the periphery of
performance practice, the Third Piano Concerto has acquired the reputation of an “unsuccessful
composition” and has disappeared from the repertoire of pianists for a lengthy period of time.
However, the interest in its “symphonic prototype” – the unfinished symphony in E-flat major
– as well as its edition by Semyon Bogatyryov and its performance have once again aroused
interest in the concerto. The issue of cyclicity of this composition has substantially become
sharpened: some performers incline towards the one-movement version, while others prefer the
three-movement version. In this context the necessity arose of carrying out the analysis of the
authorial genre-related terminology and the attention towards epistolary material (letters of Piotr
and Modest Tchaikovsky, Alexander Siloti, Sergei Taneyev, Mitrofan Belyayev), which had direct
connection to the fate of the Third Piano Concerto. The outcome of the work was the conclusion
about the validity of the existence of the three-movement version as the Third Piano Concerto,
while the genre status of the one-movement must be reexamined.
Keywords: Tchaikovsky’s Third Piano Concerto, Andante and Finale, Konzertstück, unfinished
symphony, Louis Diémer, late romantic art.
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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.33779/2587-6341.2020.2.065-074
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