For the repeat, you must look to a different piece from a different composer in a different century: this theme is one of the quotes i n Schnittke’s first symphony, right about here. (In fact, the repeat of that opening theme here is not in this movement, nor in any other movement from this piece. Maybe) That being said, this sort of harmonic and lyrical inventiveness is nearly impossible for me to hear or follow, but we get that kind of familiarity instead of repeated or established motifs in the first movement. These are things listeners of the day would have been more likely to recognize and appreciate the inventiveness of than for listeners today. He speaks of the use of folk songs throughout the piece and their motivic links (a Ukrainian song in the first, French in the second and Russian and Ukrainian for the third.
Those are Francis Maes’ words, and you can find the full quote here. There are ideas as to the composer’s “high degree of planning and calculation” in his use of the folk themes here due to a certain motivic relationship, but I don’t follow it. The first movement has that amazing opening theme that we hear twice and then never again, and it’s followed by seemingly unrelated music. It turned out that my concerto was worthless and unplayable passages were so fragmented, so clumsy, so badly written that they were beyond rescue the work itself was bad, vulgar in places I had stolen from other composers only two or three pages were worth preserving the rest must be thrown away or completely rewritten. I stood up and asked, “Well?” Then a torrent poured from Nikolay Grigoryevich’s mouth, gentle at first, then more and more growing into the sound of a Jupiter Tonana. He seemed to be saying: “My friend, how can I speak of detail when the whole thing is antipathetic?” I fortified myself with patience and played through to the end. R’s eloquent silence was of the greatest significance. The quote about Tchaikovsky’s account of the response to the piece from the Wikipedia article is abbreviated below:
Tchaikovsky’s desired pianist here, Nikolai Rubinstein, heavily criticized the piece, which was perhaps the reason it was revised and edited after that first version in 1875 (first performed on Octoin Boston with Hans von Bülow, to whom the piece was ultimately dedicated, at the keys, which was a huge success with the audience, to the point that he played the finale again, but not so warmly received by critics) until its final version in 1888.
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