Tchaikovsky CD World Premier Recording!
Introduction
Available now, the world premier recording of the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto in D Major…on the guitar! I suppose if there’s any big classical piece that I will forever identify with, it’s this one. The time span for this recording is huge: oh, about 15 years! When I first started considering playing classical violin works on the guitar, I started with the Tchaikovsky Concerto. My college roommate and I even performed sections of it together: him on synth, me on guitar.
I recorded the first movement on four-track in the late 90′s, then re-recorded it digitally a couple of years later and finally completed the concerto a year or so after that. I used a synth orchestra as the accompaniment, which I always thought a weakness. A friend suggested I re-record it, but it’s not a piece that one casually considers recording a second time! Plus, I preferred to focus on new transcriptions. Just a few months ago, the same friend suggested that I at least rework the background tracks. Hey, not a bad idea! A serendipitous meeting with a Chinese musician made this a reality and after a couple of months of weekend effort, we had a high quality sample of the orchestral track ready to go.
And so now, the recording is ready for you! Man, what an effort this has been. I hope you enjoy it; as you listen, please keep in mind the effort it took! Man, I’m just exhausted thinking about it! It’s available on a number of sites:
If you’re a shredder and are interested in learning some (or all) of the piece, read further below!
Shred this Masterpiece!
If you’re a guitarist, particularly a shredder, would you have any interest in learning some, or all, of this piece? I admit, committing to learning the whole thing is a monumental goal, however that’s certainly not a requirement. Just learning a few licks casually in this piece is entertaining and rewarding. I’ll guarantee that you haven’t played licks like this before. Some of the wildest, craziest stuff I’ve ever seen has been adapted from masterpieces over a hundred years old. This is no exception. Try out a few of these on your friends and they’ll be asking, “Where on earth did you learn that?!?”
Here’s a video sample from the first movement of the piece. The sample starts off, somewhere between four and five minutes into the piece, during a melodic slow section. The section leads into some ripping scales which further leads into shredding that just doesn’t ever seem to stop!
This piece is a blast to experiment and dabble with, capable of providing years of learning and entertainment. Oh yes, not only do I still have the transcription, but I worked really hard to make a professional transcription complete with detailed fingerings and suggestions. I’d like others to be able to enjoy this music. My goal in creating the site that you are reading this on is to share these great masterpieces with the shredding community. The Tchaikovsky concerto is a great place to start.
Some History:
I can still remember clearly when I first heard the piece. Rummaging through an old collection of my dad’s classical LPs, I found a recording of the Tchaikovsky performed by Jascha Heifetz. However, the reaction wasn’t so good. It only took the first movement, particularly the several bars of double stops starting at bar 176, for me to come to a similar conclusion of the first critic of the concerto: the violin was not played, but rather “beaten black and blue”. Eventually, the piece began to grow on me and now I love it. It’s full of a lot of interesting, very distinct soloing. I think this concerto is one of the more different ones in the Romantic repetoire. It’s not as mysterious or dark as the Sibelius or as emotional as the Bruch but it’s got a certain amount of ingenuity to it that makes it stand out the most perhaps. I began the transcription in London in 1991 and completed it a few years later after it dawned on me that a full transcription was in reach. Looking back, I wish I had chosen a piece that wasn’t as difficult. In fact, for violinists, this is definitely one of the most difficult (probably the most difficult) of the Romantic concertos. Brahms had Joachim to advise him on the solo part, Mendelssohn had David, Saint Saens had Sarasate, and Sibelius was an aspiring violinist himself. Tchaikovsky had no consultation and no firsthand knowledge. The result is solo writing that is sometimes unwieldy (it’s original dedicatee, Leopold Auer, even declined to play it stating that it was “impossible”). At the same time, I was happy at how well the piece adapted to the guitar. The transcription is probably about 99 percent accurate to the original violin part. Recording the piece was a frightening ordeal that I knew I had to eventually force myself to complete. It’s finally available and I hope you derive as much satisfaction from listening as I did upon the completion of the recording. Yes, that’s the completion of the recording! There were some tough times during the preparation of the piece (“How I am gonna pull this off?!?”).
This is fantastic. I started working on a similar project after discovering a violin for $2 at a rummage sale. It was a Franz Heberlein, from Germany valued at $750. I couldn’t put it down, but I grew up on the guitar (strat). I was transcribing Opus 35 by hand in Noteworthy Composer, but was very unhappy with the way the MIDI playback sounds, so I was looking for other .nwc tracks to see if it could be improved and stumbled on your site.
Wow, great story about the Heberlein violin. Good on you! Saw you signed up to the site just recently. Glad you did! We’ve been on hold for a while, but nope to get things moving again very soon. Seems like you will really enjoy your time here. Stay in touch!