# Great works that had bad premiers



## Pyotr (Feb 26, 2013)

As most of you know, not all of the great works have gotten off to a great start. Not all of them received the initial reception that, for example, Beethoven's 9th did where Ludwig got five standing ovations, although he couldn't hear any of them. Many of them premiered to bored royalty, snoozing audiences, and bad reviews. Occasionally, audiences were downright hostile and frequently it was only other musicians that recognized the work's brilliance at first hearing. I thought it might be fun to discuss the great works that had bad starts. 
Please limit your submissions to only ONE per post and, if you want, write a few words about why you think it bombed, even if it's only your theory. Maybe someone else has another one. All classical music works are allowed including ballets and operas.
I'll go first.

*Work*: Ludwig van Beethoven's Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 61 Argumentatively, the greatest violin concerto of the romantic period.

*Date of premiere*: 23 December 1806

*Reason*: I can only surmise that the violin concerto was becoming passé at the time. The piano being the new, hot, johnny-come-lately instrument was all of the rage. Beethoven actually converted it to a piano concerto when he realized that it was not going to be successful. There's also the rumor that the violinist, Clement is said to have interrupted the concerto between the first and second movements with a solo composition of his own.


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## Cheyenne (Aug 6, 2012)

Do we say the Rite of Spring bombed..? :lol:


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Re Beethoven's premieres of the Violin Concerto, and of the 4th Piano Concerto, written about the same time, I've never seen anything saying they were unsuccessful. However, both works sank beneath the waves and no repeat performances are recorded until (guess who?) Mendelssohn resurrected them 30 and 40 years later.

Re Beethoven's 9th, the audience apparently loved it but Beethoven made no money from the premiere and believed he had been cheated. So, successful to whom might be asked!

Somebody will mention the Rite of Spring, which had one of the most successful premieres in history. A riot (planned in advance or otherwise) was the best thing that could have happened.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Both the demands involving understanding the fundamental musical concepts of the music and the technical demands made upon the most accomplished of professional players by Beethoven are well-documented. The player who premiered the work struggled with it through rehearsals and during the performance.

This was not unique solely for solo vehicles, but often enough for all the parts for all the players of the orchestra.

Some of those contemporary players who went into original instruments and HIP performance have found the same to be generally true: whether is is Rameau or Beethoven: both composers were writing highly virtuosic and highly difficult to perform music, difficult even for the professional virtuosi of their day.

If the work was that difficult for violinists of the day, it would not get much play. Beethoven making use of a large-scale work he had already composed by re-working it for piano, would have given him a vehicle as a performer which would at least better bet his odds of a paying gig, making money off of it: The motivation to re-write may have been a merely pragmatic one.


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## Cheyenne (Aug 6, 2012)

KenOC said:


> Somebody will mention the Rite of Spring, which had one of the most successful premieres in history. A riot (planned in advance or otherwise) was the best thing that could have happened.


Yes, yes, which I why I joked; despite being successful in one way a riot starting doesn't exactly give the most positive message.

As for truly bad premieres, Mahler had many of those, such as his seventh.

What I have always wondered is, do new composers get a second chance when their work is unsuccessful the first time? Won't the work be shunned in the future, not getting a second chance?


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

PetrB said:


> If the work was that difficult for violinists of the day, it would not get much play. Beethoven making use of a large-scale work he had already composed by re-working it for piano, would have given him a vehicle as a performer which would at least better bet his odds of a paying gig, making money off of it: The motivation to re-write may have been a merely pragmatic one.


Re Beethoven's Violin Concerto, maybe it wasn't difficult or flashy enough -- it's really kind of relaxed overall. Wiki does mention its "lack of success" at the premiere, but no detail is given. The re-write as a piano concerto was at the request of Clementi, evidently in his role as a publisher. Mikhail Pletnev has recently arranged it as a clarinet concerto, which would be interesting to hear.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

KenOC said:


> Re Beethoven's Violin Concerto, maybe it wasn't difficult or flashy enough -- it's really kind of relaxed overall. Wiki does mention its "lack of success" at the premiere, but no detail is given. The re-write as a piano concerto was at the request of Clementi, evidently in his role as a publisher. Mikhail Pletnev has recently arranged it as a clarinet concerto, which would be interesting to hear.


Oh, that flaky and shallow bourgeois public, once again messing with the curve of what is great. What a canker on the integrity of musicians, huh


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Berlioz ~ Symphonie fantastique

The premiere found the piece not at all well-received. The composer did, then, make a few revisions, only a musicologist with access to the original (if it still exists) could say what and how many -- but my hunch is not very many at all of which would make a huge difference in the score with which we are now familiar.

One Very Big Difference between the premiere and the second performance:
At the Premiere, there was no program printed about this _supposedly programmatic piece!_

The second performance did have, in the programs, the Story of what is supposed to be programmatic, and then the work was a success.

Also unknown is whether there ever was such a detailed program initially in the composer's mind, or whether he wrote the squib on the programmatic content after the fact of having composed the symphony.

This tantalizes me: 
1.) Art on the wall with no labels or explanations does not sell at the opening exhibition. 
2.) The artist makes up some names, labels and _explanations_ of the art and then, with no other major difference in the artwork itself, it sells.


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## Norse (May 10, 2010)

Brahms' first piano concerto was definetely no success when it premiered. The audience was completely unenthusiastic and in Leipzig they actually hissed, plus it received some pretty scolding reviews. Morons..  I wonder if Brahms got to see it rise in popularity or if that only happened after his death.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Cheyenne said:


> As for truly bad premieres, Mahler had many of those, such as his seventh.


Mahler regularly received boos for his efforts, but two of his most disliked works (by critics and audiences) during his lifetime have, amusingly enough, turned into audience favorites: the 1st and the 4th symphonies.

I can think of few worse receptions than that given to Berg's Altenberg Lieder, the performance of which (March 31, 1913) had to be stopped when a riot (including fistfights and so forth) broke out.

Why was it received so poorly? Well, the audience came ready to hate whatever was played, and the Viennese did love their scandals. Furthermore, they had been restlessly waiting through Webern's Six Orchestral Pieces, Schoenberg's Chamber Symphony in E, and Zemlinsky's Maeterlinck Lieder, so tensions were already running high.

Today, while not exactly an audience favorite, the Berg songs are appreciated for their intensity of expression and refinement of orchestral sound as well as their lyrical beauty.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

PetrB said:


> Also unknown is whether there ever was such a detailed program initially in the composer's mind, or whether he wrote the squib on the programmatic content after the fact of having composed the symphony.
> 
> This tantalizes me:
> 1.) Art on the wall with no labels or explanations does not sell at the opening exhibition.
> 2.) The artist makes up some names, labels and _explanations_ of the art and then, with no other major difference in the artwork itself, it sells.


One frequent recurring theme in Mahler criticism during his lifetime was that he wrote "program music without a program", that his music was inexplicable without some kind of extra-musical reference.


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## ahammel (Oct 10, 2012)

Mahlerian said:


> Why was it received so poorly? Well, the audience came ready to hate whatever was played, and the Viennese did love their scandals. Furthermore, they had been restlessly waiting through Webern's Six Orchestral Pieces, Schoenberg's Chamber Symphony in E, and Zemlinsky's Maeterlinck Lieder, so tensions were already running high.


That's some kind of programming!


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Bizet's Carmen had a poor premiere and early history. For performances after the premiere, management had to give away many tickets to fill the seats, and the reviews were generally poor. Bizet died on the day of the 33rd performance, and the work was shortly hailed as a masterpiece.


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## GGluek (Dec 11, 2011)

Tippett's Second Symphony broke down during it first performance -- for reasons that were not his fault.


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## GreenMamba (Oct 14, 2012)

GGluek said:


> Tippett's Second Symphony broke down during it first performance -- for reasons that were not his fault.


I hadn't heard the story before, bu Wikipedia gives an interesting re-telling:



> Recent scholarship, however, indicates that the cause of the collapse lay rather with the flute getting lost and beginning a solo passage bar too early; the woodwind section en masse proceeded to get a bar ahead of the strings. When the horns (who were taking their cues from the woodwind parts) joined in the melee by coming in a bar too early also, Boult took the decision to halt the performance. Up to the point of halting, the string section had been serenely playing on, ignoring the confusion in the rest of the orchestra; they were still together, and had arrived at the correct point.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

The premiere of Rachmaninoff's Symphony #1 was as total a disaster as can be imagined. Glazunov, who conducted, didn't understand the music and there were insufficient rehearsals. Some reported that Glazunov was drunk on the podium as well... Rachmaninoff fled before the performance was over.

Critically, Cesar Cui led the charge: "If there were a conservatory in Hell, and if one of its talented students were to compose a programme symphony based on the story of the Ten Plagues of Egypt, and if he were to compose a symphony like Mr. Rachmaninoff's, then he would have fulfilled his task brilliantly and would delight the inhabitants of Hell. To us this music leaves an evil impression with its broken rhythms, obscurity and vagueness of form, meaningless repetition of the same short tricks, the nasal sound of the orchestra, the strained crash of the brass, and above all its sickly perverse harmonization and quasi-melodic outlines, the complete absence of simplicity and naturalness, the complete absence of themes."


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

KenOC said:


> The premiere of Rachmaninoff's Symphony #1 was as total a disaster as can be imagined. Glazunov, who conducted, didn't understand the music and there were insufficient rehearsals. Some reported that Glazunov was drunk on the podium as well... Rachmaninoff fled before the performance was over.


He apparently actually needed psychotherapy afterwards, and it's a wonder he ever composed anything again. Thank you Mr. Cui, for almost robbing us of Rachmaninoff...


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## jurianbai (Nov 23, 2008)

I heard that 4'33" was pretty disaster.. somebody knock off their D string.

Btw, can we derived that Beethoven Grand Fugue was inferior _premiere_ based on public's reception around that time...?


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

ahammel said:


> That's some kind of programming!


Yes,I think I would have been part of the riot if I'd been there.


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

KenOC said:


> Bizet's Carmen had a poor premiere and early history. For performances after the premiere, management had to give away many tickets to fill the seats, and the reviews were generally poor. Bizet died on the day of the 33rd performance, and the work was shortly hailed as a masterpiece.


It seems that we have been reading different versions of history.
After an uncertain rather than (as generally supposed) a disastrous premiere at the Opera Comique Carmen's eventual popularity was founded on a successful performance in Vienna later in the same year.
From then it travelled all over Europe ,the success finally confirmed by the Paris revival of 1883.


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## StevenOBrien (Jun 27, 2011)

Cheyenne said:


> Do we say the Rite of Spring bombed..? :lol:


Hell no! One could argue that it was the most successful premiere in history!


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

Beethoven op 127 (string quartet no12)

http://www.scena.org/lsm/sm16-8/sm16-8_revolutionaries_en.html

This is an interesting article in general.


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

*Swan Lake*

I am surprised that no one has yet mentioned Tchaikovsky's _Swan Lake_.


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## ChrisDevonshireEllis (May 12, 2013)

Swan Lakes initial reception was down to inferior choreography. Tchaikovsky didn't mess with the score. It's failure was as a ballet, not as music. But back to the author.

One suspects by the tone of your thread you have something to contribute or collect. Which is it? 
The Rite - whose outrage was caused as much by the choreography (as per Swan lake) as the music that resonated. Now as its 100th anniversary approaches - Gergiev plus Mariinsky are recreating it at the original venue. It's become a standard. A weird one, but a great example of thinking outside the box as there has ever been. Very few composers can musically describe the violence of spring, ice cracking, buds bursting out, death's winter hibernatiing zombies coming to life. That's what he describes. It'd be the coolest soundtrack to "Twilight" ever. 

Other than that, remaining in the Russian theme, Rachmaninovs 1st? Conducted by Glazunov apparently after too many vodkas and a disaster that sent a sensitive young man into depression for three years? 

Calling Stravinskys music akin to a dentists drill is one thing. Depriving the world of the young talents of one of our most loved composers for three years takes a special kind of abuse. 

Anyone for Callas and the Greek while we're on the subject? Shocking waste of ego over talent.

As for vodka, I'm a Chopin guy for that potato kick, otherwise Stolichnaya, with all it's oily wonderfulness will do it for me.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

starry said:


> Beethoven op 127 (string quartet no12)
> 
> http://www.scena.org/lsm/sm16-8/sm16-8_revolutionaries_en.html
> 
> This is an interesting article in general.


A very interesting piece, thanks!


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

Regarding the review by Cui of the Rachmaninov 1st symphony , Beckmesser's ghost seems to have been haunting him at the time .


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