"The piece was written in Clarens, a Swiss resort on the shores of Lake Geneva, where Tchaikovsky had gone to recover from the depression brought on by his disastrous marriage to Antonina Miliukova. "

So says Wikipedia. The poor man. And poor Antonina, too. It seems to be a generally accepted view that Tchaikovsky was homosexual. Whether the marriage was ventured upon as a way of covering up that fact, or he really thought it could work, or she knew and accepted the situation for reasons of her own, I will leave to those who are more interested in the biography than I am. I mention it because one would suppose that the concerto would be deeply melancholy, at least. But it isn't. It isn't exactly sunny, either, but it doesn't come near the heartbreak and gloom of, for instance, the Sixth Symphony. But then, whatever Tchaikovsky felt about the ending of the marriage, it probably wasn't heartbreak. 

In one very broad aspect it resembles the Beethoven and Brahms concertos: its first movement is much longer than the other two, roughly as long as the second and third combined. Maybe there was some sense of what a concerto is supposed to be that plays a part in this, but if it was not unusual it wasn't exactly a convention, either, as Mendelssohn and Bruch and Dvorak didn't follow it. 

The first movement includes two "big tunes," as I think of them: grand, beautiful, memorable, often famous melodies. These are, to put it flippantly, played around with in various ways until there is a climax which brings them together in what the Wikipedia article describes as an "arrival," a good term, and one of those heart-grabbing, possibly tear-jerking, moments which any music lover loves. Not the tears of pathos, but the good tears similar to those produced by eucatastrophe, the term invented (it seems) by Tolkien to describe a sudden unexpected turn for the good in a story. I'm partial to cadenzas, and this one is wonderful, including a passage of those high-pitched whistling tones which I think are harmonics and which must be extremely difficult to play. 

The second movement is a deeply mournful theme, turning into a sort of slow gentle waltz which seems to me to convey resignation. Here, perhaps, is something connected to the marriage. There is no break between the second movement's Andante and the third's Allegro vivacissimo, and I will venture to complain about that. It's too sudden and startling, downright unpleasant in my opinion. I'll get used to it. Or perhaps implement my own pause as I listen to it on CD or MP3. At any rate, if there is any connection between the concerto and the marriage, this movement suggests that the composer got over his distress about the latter. As with the Beethoven, this movement seems a bit of a letdown to me, which seems a possibility built into the dominance of the first movement. 

The recording I listened to is, in fact, on MP3. It's an older one: Isaac Stern, with Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra. As with the Dvorak, I felt no need to investigate other recordings, though I probably will eventually. As best I can tell from Discogs it was originally recorded in 1959, which makes its outstanding sound even more impressive. It's part of the MP3 version of a boxed CD set, a set of boxed sets, called The Original Jacket Collection, this being the Ormandy and Philadelphia box, a 10-CD set, presumably someone's idea of the best work of that conductor and orchestra. Some number of years ago, greater than five and less than twenty, an MP3 version was offered for some ridiculously low price, probably on Amazon, and I grabbed it. It's 104 separate files of absolutely wonderful music. I haven't heard all of it, but I'm sure it's wonderful.