1.7 (above average)
Friday 25 May 2012
Tune of the Day: Theme from Piano Concerto No. 1
by P.I. Tchaikovsky, transcribed for solo flute
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky comosed his Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat minor, Op. 23, between 1874 and 1875. It is one of the most popular compositions by the Russian composer, and among the best known of all piano concertos.
The concerto's first theme is based on a melody that Tchaikovsky heard performed by blind beggar-musicians at a market in Kamenka (near Kiev), and is notable for its apparent independence from the rest of the movement and from the concerto as a whole, especially given its setting not in the work's nominal key of B-flat minor but rather in D-flat major, that key's relative major. Despite its very substantial nature, the theme is only heard twice, and it never reappears at any later point in the concerto.