 Tchaikovsky biographer and music writer David Brown has commented, "[The Concert Fantasia's] crippling weakness is that it contains not one really strong idea, yet its very original structure suffices to show that Tchaikovsky was concerned to fashion something more than a mere showpiece to gratify a virtuoso pianist or inflame a lionizing audience".He adds, "For all its melodic shortcomings, the Concert Fantasia has some engaging qualities and a structural freshness which should win it the occasional hearing".One of its earliest modern-day champions was Noel Mewton-Wood, who recorded it in 1951, with an orchestra conducted by Walter Goehr.