Dvořák – Cellokonzert / Tchaikovsky – Rokoko-Variationen

Discogs

Tchaikovsky’s Variations on a rococo theme, composed in 1876 can be considered his cello concerto. It was written with the help of the German cellist Wilhelm Fitzenhagen. Help that was not entirely welcome: eleven years later one of his Tchaikovsky’s students remembers he was quite distraught about some of the changes Fitzenhagen enforced on him: Fitzenhagen’s been here. Look what he’s done with my composition — everything’s been changed!

The changes are indeed huge: of the eight variations Fitzenhagen changed the order of six, switched around the endings of two and dropped one entirely. And he did these changes directly in the autograph. It was not until Russian cellist Viktor Kubatsky took a through look at these manuscripts (with some help of an Xray machine) that he found out what these changes actually were. In the words of cellist Pieter Wispelwey, who recorded the work in both versions:

Funnily enough, this authentic version feels more like the ‘bastard’ version than the widely played, blasphemous Fitzenhagen travesty. But bastards should also be allowed to be heard, particularly when they are the rightful claimants!

Nice story, but since this record is not mentioning any of this, I suppose it is in the better known Fitzenhagen order.

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