Above: South Korea’s Yeol Eum Son… Photo credit Ken Leanfore
The South Korean pianist Yeol Eum Son delivered a spirited rendition of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No 1 on August 21, 2026 with the SSO in the concert hall of the SOH. As this concert commenced at 11 am, it was a relatively new experience for me, as I’m often still at home sleeping at this time in the morning. Still, Yeol Eum’s powerful version of this extremely well-known work was enough to keep awake even the most sleepy listener.
I say “extremely well-known work” justifiably, as even many people who know little of classical music can sing the melody which is played by the orchestra in the opening bars of the concerto and which is restated without further ado by the pianist soon after. In 1941 a popular song Tonight We Love, an instrumental version recorded by Freddy Martin and his orchestra became No 1 on the American hit parade. It was heard on Australian radio too, as I’m old enough to remember it very well, and feel I could hum the whole melody straight through. Certainly, this familiar theme is entrenched in today’s collective memory.
Tchaikovsky wrote this concerto between November 1874 and February 1875. As usual with legendary classical works, which have become part of standard orchestral repertoires during the 20th Century, the back story of this concerto’s inception and reception at the time of writing is as interesting as the music itself. We know that three days after finishing the work, Tchaikovsky, then aged 34 in February 1875,played the work to two friends, the pianist Nikolai Rubinstein, whom he hoped would perform the work, and another musical friend, Nikolai Hubert, at the Moscow Conservatory, three days after finishing the concerto.
Unfortunately Rubinstein was not impressed. Tchaikovsky later summarised Rubinstein’s reaction: “Rubinstein repeated that my concerto was impossible, pointed out many places where it would have to be completely revised, and said that if within a limited time I reworked the concerto according to his demands, then he would do me the honour of playing my thing at his concert.”
Tchaikovsky’s reaction to Rubinstein’s criticism was explosive. In fact, he was insulted. “I shall not alter a single note,” Tchaikovsky said, “I shall publish the work exactly as it is! This I did”. Accordingly the world premiere took place on October 25, 1875, in Boston, Massachusetts, with the piano part being played by the German conductor, pianist, and composer Hans von Bülow. The audience reaction in Boston was so enthusiastic, that von Bülow was obliged to repeat the finale as an encore. Subsequently, encouraged by the American reception, von Bülow played the concerto many times again, championing it in international tours, helping to turn the rejected score into a global triumph.
As a matter of interest, Rubinstein publicly withdrew his criticism and signalled his change of heart in August/September, 1878, when he performed the work at Trocadero Hall during the Paris International Exhibition. Tchaikovsky revised the concerto three times, the last in 1888, which is the version usually played today.
The featured soloist Yeol Eum wore a floor-length pale golden dress, with a black under-garment visible, and black high-heeled shoes. As the concerto prompts the soloist to forcefully emphasise certain chords, I was fascinated by the way in which she threw her head back as she emphasised those chords, causing her full head of black hair to fall forward. She was frequently required to push that hair out of the way, and I wondered whether this might upset her concentration. Apparently not. But this is not the sort of hindrance which a male pianist would normally have to cope with.
There’s not much more to report on, except to say that I was highly impressed with Yeol Eum’s technical command of Tchaikovsky’s piano writing. Her playing was stunning throughout, typical of the outstanding soloists being presented in the concerto format these days by the SSO.
I was also struck by her excellent time, which I found welcome in the sense that she did not employ over-emotional tempo variations by slowing down in order to maximise the emotional potentialities in Tchaikovsky’s writing. On the contrary she usually kept strict time which I found exceedingly appealing, as it reflects my admiration for the strict time which characterises the great jazz pianists. I’ve often wondered why some classical pianists tend to race the orchestra particularly in the piano concertos of Mozart. The integration of Yeol Eum’s playing and that of the SSO under conductor Nicholas Ellis was superb. As Yeol Eum has said that her favourite composer is Mozart, I will be checking out her versions of his great piano concertos as soon as possible.
Serendipitously, I was able to hear Yeol Eum play the Tchaikovsky work again the following night on August 22, and if it’s possible that the initial great performance could be superseded in any way, the second one had a little more going for it. The concert hall appeared to be sold out; I estimate that an audience in excess of 2,000 people gave her a number of curtain calls – the applause seemed to go on forever – and Yeol Eum was gracious enough to give us an encore: Tchaikovsky’s Valse Sentimentale, Op 51, No 6, a rather melancholy little work of about five minutes, which was exquisite to hear.
I’ve been informed by the friend who accompanied me on August 21, that the August 22 performance was recorded by the ABC, and will be broadcast on ABC Classic FM on Monday September 21 at 1 pm. I’ll be listening.
Courtesy of inspired programming, the performance on August 21 bracketed together two early works from young composers, so it was apposite that the second work on the program was that from an even younger Russian composer than Tchaikovsky: the 19-year-old Dmitri Shostakovich, whose Symphony No 1 came to the fore in 1925.
This symphony was written between 1924 and 1925 as Shostakovich’s graduation project at the Leningrad Conservatory, giving him the equivalent of a college music degree in 1925. Note that the Saint Petersburg Conservatory became the Leningrad Conservatory in 1924, following the death of Lenin when the city of Petrograd was renamed Leningrad. Shostakovich completed the symphony at the age of 19, and the work received its public premiere on May 12, 1926.
Shostakovich had to weather some trying years during the gestation of this symphony. He was only 10 years old when the Russian Revolution in 1917 swept away the Tsarist autocracy, to be replaced by a Communist dictatorship. The following years were characterised by famine, civil war and rationing. Fuel rationing left the Conservatory seriously unheated during the freezing Petrograd winters.
In 1922, Shostakovich’s father, a bureaucrat in the Department of Weights and Measures, died from pneumonia. His mother had to work to support Shostakovich and his two sisters, and Shostakovich brought in extra money by working as an improvising pianist at silent movie theatres.
Shostakovich had been at the Conservatory since the age of 13, where he was known as a formidable pianist. By the early 1920s he was already absorbing many of the young century’s musical developments. He collaborated with other young musicians who had imported scores from abroad, and assimilated the new musical language being developed internationally by composers such as Stravinsky and Prokofiev. While his first symphony reveals traces of these influences, it’s said that Shostakovich was able to wield them into what was immediately recognizable as his unmistakable personal voice.
I’d already had a taste of the character of Shostakovich’s symphony by attending the SSO’s open rehearsal on August 19, when conductor Nicholas Ellis ran the SSO through several sections of the work. Right from the start I had the impression that the first movement in many ways primarily consisted of orchestral fragments which suggested promising trains of thought by Shostakovich but which were frequently not developed.
After the symphony’s opening with a duet for trumpet and bassoon, which has been described as mischievous, the first movement proceeds with a series of starts and stops, as if Shostakovich is teasing the listener. Because Shostakovich was later notorious for his irony, it’s natural to be on the lookout for his perverse sense of humour. One analyst has referred to “melodic fragments which furtively appear in one set of instruments then another, like a forbidden note passed around a classroom.”
There’s no doubt that this lovely symphony is a seriously precocious work from a sublimely talented young composer, who was already a master at 19 years of age. Because this work was written well before the Soviet state introduced the artistic strictures which were to substantially affect Shostakovich’s freedom of expression throughout his career until the death of Stalin in 1953, I think we can assume that the composer at this early stage in his career was writing what was close to his heart. Certainly the work has a delightfully infectious, carefree spirit. It’s the sort of work I will return to for solace.
If any reader wishes to follow up this symphony on YouTube, I warmly recommend the two versions conducted by Leonard Bernstein: with the New York Philharmonic in December, 1971; and with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in June, 1988. Both are beautiful versions, the latter winning in the US the 1990 Grammy Award for Best Orchestral Performance.
This performance on August 21, 2026. opened with the South Korean pianist Yeol Eum Son playing Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No 1 with the SSO. This was followed by Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No 1, with the SSO conducted by Nicholas Ellis.
