Symphony no. 1 "Winter Daydreams" in G minor, op. 13

Tchaikovsky sketched his First Symphony in the spring of 1866, aged twenty-six, newly graduated and newly installed as a professor at Nikolai Rubinstein's Moscow Conservatory. Teaching filled his days, so he wrote at night; his brother Modest recorded that no other work cost him such physical and nervous exhaustion. Anton Rubinstein and Nikolai Zaremba demanded a thorough rewrite and still rejected the result. Nikolai Rubinstein conducted the complete premiere in Moscow on 15 February 1868, and the grateful composer dedicated the score to him. A third revision followed in 1874.