"Worthless and unplayable." That's what one famous pianist said about it.

When Tchaikovsky showed his first piano concerto to Nikolai Rubinstein, the verdict was brutal. Tchaikovsky refused to change it and found another champion: the German pianist Hans von Bülow.

On October 25, 1875, the concerto had its world premiere not in Russia, but in Boston, at the Music Hall, with von Bülow as soloist. Its thunderous opening chords soon made it one of the most beloved concertos ever written, and it remains a fixture of concert halls everywhere.

Why it still matters: one harsh critic was wrong, and the music outlived the criticism.

Have you ever proven a critic wrong?

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