Hough Plays Tchaikovsky
While the CD has not yet been released, there are some really interesting aspects to it: The *first* Tchaikovsky concerto is the “Warhorse”, which was made more famous by Van Cliburn when he won the Tchaikovsky competition in 1958.
The 2nd and 3rd concerti are not as well known, and furthermore there are somewhat controversial.
Stephen Hough is the performer of all three of these concerti. The Concerto #2, has a very extensive first movement with three cadenzas. The second movement was quite lengthy and unusual, and the composer’s pupil, Alexander Siloti, made some massive cuts in which he deleted half of the music from this movement.
In this recording, however, Stephen Hough, reconstitutes the original Tchaikovsky material, but transforms a violin solo into a piano part…
Here is an old article from Mr. Hough’s Blog that explains the whole background. Check it out here.
Here is Stephen Hough playing the second movement of Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Leonard Slatkin at the 2001 BBC Proms concerts.
