Today's Listening

 Here is Yuja Wang with the Lindberg Piano Concerto No. 3. I really like the opening where the orchestra emerges out of the piano resonance like an image from smoke.

I wonder, though, how would it affect her career if she changed her concert garb?

The Modern Piano Concerto

Years ago Taruskin published one of his large, economy sized essays on several new books on classical music. The basic message was, with friends like these, who needs enemies? And now Ted Gioia joins their ranks with a splendid piece of yellow journalism purporting to turn us on to, of all things, the modern piano concerto: 10 Underrated Modern Piano Concertos. Here's how it begins:

You rarely see the words fun and classical music in the same sentence.

That must be intentional. Just take a look at those musicians squeezed into their uncomfortable formal attire, all with pinched, somber expressions on their faces. And then you look at the audience, and see the exact same thing.

I must have missed the memo. Aren’t we allowed to enjoy this stuff?

No, of course not, the memo reads "enjoyment of classical music is possible, but not likely." But kidding aside, I'm envisioning a Miles Davis concert with all the musicians with somber expressions and, yes, the audience with the same pinched somber expressions. Hey, you want fun, go to a Weird Al Yankovic concert.

So this is just sneering, scurrilous journalism with the sole purpose of setting up a straw man that he is about to disembowel. But first he takes it up a notch by doing a nasty hit and run on contemporary piano concertos--hey, they are even worse!

Finally he gets to the point and gives examples of several "underrated modern piano concertos." I can only see the first three since I am not a subscriber. The first is by Nikolai Kapustin a jazzy Ukrainian who sounds like Rachmaninoff if he were mugged in an alley by Dave Brubeck. Honestly, with different harmonies it is not terribly different from a Bartók concerto. Next is a very serene piece by Takashi Yoshimatsu and finally one by the Australian Peggy Glanville-Hicks. Ted asks why we don't hear more of her music. I suspect her not being American has a lot to do with that. So, ok, some mildly interesting pieces.

The problem for me is the way Ted always oversells his take on everything and the seeming obligatory sneer at classical music as an opening gesture. Would it not be better to just start by telling us a little bit about each composer, leaving out the cheap editorial?

Yep.

Here's one of those hateful modern piano concertos that Ted is probably thinking of, the one by Arnold Schoenberg.

Now, I'm not chuckling, but I am smiling with delight because, come on, this is delightful music. And it doesn't sound much like anything else, something you can't necessarily say about a lot of those more "fun" concertos.

UPDATE: Not long after writing this I ran into a very fine piece of writing about music: Shostakovich in South Dakota which I encourage you to hasten over to read. Yes, it's a bit long, but well-worth the time.

So unnoticed are the American arts that a major American historian, Jill Lepore, can produce a wonderfully readable 900-page historical overview—These Truths: A History of the United States (2018)—without devoting so much as a sentence to the arts. No one could possibly dispute her emphasis on present-day issues and needs—the urgency of pondering American race relations and inequality. But it does not follow that there should be no consideration of Walt Whitman or Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson or William Faulkner, Charles Ives or George Gershwin, Duke Ellington or Billie Holiday. Classical music, opera, theater, jazz, and Hollywood are all absent. Could any history of Russia omit Tolstoy? Could a British historian overlook Shakespeare? Is there a Germany without Goethe?

That's just a tiny sample from a long discussion of how music is received in America and some really successful efforts to improve that reception. 

Beethoven vs Mendelssohn in the Piano Concerto

My post yesterday provoked a couple of interesting comments so I would like to do a follow up. Please go and read the post and especially the comments:

https://themusicsalon.blogspot.com/2020/03/beethoven-canonic-iconoclast.html

What I was doing in the post was contrasting Beethoven, at the core of the classical music canon, with Mendelssohn, a composer whose position seems to be sinking a bit, and Shostakovich, a composer who is rising in the musical world's estimation. My commentators presented some statistics on the one hand, showing that Mendelssohn is performed quite a lot, and with some words in support of Mendelssohn's piano concertos and of Hummel, a rather neglected composer. Let's set Hummel to one side for now and look at the piano concertos of Mendelssohn alongside those of Beethoven.

But before getting into that, I want to briefly note that mere statistics of how often a composer is performed can be deceiving. As I said in my comment, it is where and by whom that is more important. For example, when Leonard Bernstein conducted the Symphony No. 9 of Beethoven on the occasion of the falling of the Berlin wall, that was acknowledgement that Beethoven, and that work in particular, is at the heart of Western musical culture. When Igor Levit, one of the most promising young pianists today, made his recording debut on Sony he chose to record all five of the Beethoven late piano sonatas. This coming summer, the Salzburg Festival is programming all of the Beethoven piano concertos in one mammoth concert--oh, and Levit is playing all the sonatas in a series of eight recitals. Sure, this is partly because of the Beethoven 250th anniversary. But programming all the sonatas, or all the string quartets, or all the symphonies is not that unusual in a serious European festival. When I was there as a student they had the Alban Berg Quartet playing all the string quartets in a series of concerts and it wasn't any kind of anniversary.

Mendelssohn does not get the same attention. Yes, during 2009, the 200th anniversary of his birth, there was some celebration--a performance of the rarely-heard Symphony No. 2 "Lobgesang" at the 2009 Proms, for example, and a conference at Oxford University. But, very telling, the conference was devoted not just to Mendelssohn, but to four composers who all had an anniversary that year:

This conference combined a consideration of four major composers Purcell, Handel, Haydn and Mendelssohn. Each composer had a relevant anniversary in 2009 – Purcell, 350 years after birth; Handel, 250 years after death; Haydn, 200 years after death; and Mendelssohn, 200 years after birth...

Let's get to the music. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. Here is the Piano Concerto No. 1 by Mendelssohn with Stephen Hough and the Radio Philharmonic:

Let's put that alongside the Piano Concerto No. 1 by Beethoven, here played by Krystian Zimerman and the Vienna Philharmonic:

Now, try and remember the opening theme of the Mendelssohn. No? I think that the most salient element in a really outstanding piece of music is its individuality and hence its memorability. Sorry to say, but the Mendelssohn seems almost generic next to the Beethoven. The pianist is playing a forest of notes, but to little effect. Is this just my subjective impression? Do you agree? I don't want to sit down and start analyzing the scores and I think that we can easily hear the difference. How about a different pair of concertos? Here is Mendelssohn's Piano Concerto No. 2:

And Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 3, chosen because it is also in a minor key:

Hm, well, more of the same. Undistinguished music from Mendelssohn and really memorable themes from Beethoven. But don't take my word for it. Here is what Robert Schumann had to say about the Mendelssohn:

This concerto, to be sure, will offer virtuosos little in which to show off their monstrous dexterity. Mendelssohn gives them almost nothing to do that they have not already done a hundred times before. We have often heard them complain about it. And not unjustly! ...

One will ask how it compares with his First Concerto. It's the same, and yet not the same; the same because it comes from the same practised master hand, different because it comes ten years later. Sebastian Bach is discernible in the harmonization. The rest, melody, form and instrumentation are all Mendelssohn.

Many Notes and a Note

I'm reading a fairly recent biography of Prokofiev right now, written by Daniel Jaffé for Phaidon. It is safe to say that few composers have had quite as much turmoil to deal with in their life as Prokofiev: The 1905 Russian Revolution, which interrupted his studies at the St. Petersburg conservatory, World War I, the two revolutions in Russia in 1917, the Russian Civil War from 1917 to 1922, the Great Purge of Joseph Stalin and, finally, World War II. Whew! Can you imagine trying to arrange a trip from Russia to Italy to meet with Diaghilev to work out the details of a ballet he has just commissioned you to write? In the middle of the First World War?

But even years, like 1913, when wars and revolutions were not tearing the world apart, he had a remarkable amount of upheaval to withstand. For much of his youth, Prokofiev's best friend was Maximillian Schmidthoff, a fellow student at the conservatory and a fellow lover of philosophy, caustic humor and intellectual banter. Quoting from Jaffé, op. cit. pp 33-4:

On 26 April 1913, shortly after his twenty-second birthday, Prokofiev received a note sent by Max from Terioki, outside St Petersburg on the Finnish Gulf: 'Dear Seryozha, I'm writing to tell you the latest news--I have shot myself. Don't get too upset but take it with indifference, for in truth it doesn't deserve anything more than that. Farewell. Max. The reasons are unimportant.'

Schmidthoff had committed suicide. The reason, as given by Jaffé, was that Max, despite or because of his extravagant lifestyle, was penniless. Prokofiev dedicated four pieces to his friend, including the one he was working on at the time of his suicide, the Piano Concerto No. 2.

As a rule, I dislike inserting biography into music or attributing aesthetic characteristics to mere biographical incidents, but I can't listen to the concerto in quite the same way now. The apocalyptic moments, such as at the end of the first movement, seem keener than before. And I am surprised to be reminded that the composer was only twenty-two at time of writing.

Let's listen to the Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor, op. 16. The original was lost and had to be reconstructed from a piano score in 1923. The pianist is Aleksander Toradze with the Mariinsky Orchestra conducted by Valery Gergiev:

Concerto Guide: Shostakovich, Piano Concerto no. 2, op. 102

I mentioned last week that I am running up against the copyright wall as the concertos from now on are all likely to still be under copyright and therefore not obtainable from IMSLP. True, I could and should simply order study scores from the publishers but they take weeks (if not months) to arrive and are quite costly. This blog has a pretty tight budget as I do not collect revenue from anywhere, but just do it on my own nickel. But I don't entirely discount the possibility of ordering the score of a recent concerto if it seems really interesting. The Violin Concerto by Salonen might be a candidate.

However, I have managed to find a two-piano reduction of the Piano Concerto no. 2 in F major by Shostakovich. He didn't rate this work terribly highly himself. As Laurel Fay notes in her biography of Shostakovich:

A week after its completion on 5 February 1957, Shostakovich pooh-poohed it in a letter to Denisov as a work with no redeeming artistic merits. What he did not say was that the concerto ... had been written as a vehicle for his son Maxim, then in his final year of study at the Central Music School.

She goes on to tell us that Maxim premiered the piece on his 19th birthday in May 1957.

Critics were greatly taken with the concerto's charming simplicity, carefree spirit, and lyrical warmth.

Say what? That doesn't sound much like Shostakovich whose music is usually better described as being dark, tortured, sardonic and depressive. But it is undeniable that the Second Piano Concerto is a very cheerful work--and why wouldn't it be? Shostakovich was obviously delighted with his son's achievement in music and delighted in writing a suitably exuberant work for him. It is interesting that the only other piano concerto by Shostakovich, which I posted about here, is also a very cheerful work, one that he wrote for himself when he was a young man of 27. These two light-hearted piano concertos contrast considerably with the ones for cello and violin, which are much more substantial, and darker, works. I don't have the scores, but if I come across them, I would certainly post something on them.

But back to the piano concerto. Here is the opening theme, which we hear a portion of in the orchestra before it is stated fully in the piano:

Which is a perfectly normal theme in F major that might have been written by Haydn except for the fact that it goes astray, wandering into D flat for a measure or so before closing in F. This little divergence turns an 8 measure period into 10 measures. Rhythmically it is a bit odd as well. I suppose that it would be easy to call this neo-classical though by this point, that phase was long over. There are no substantial contrasts in the movement; the second theme is not so different from the first, if rhythmically smoother:

This theme as well has a tendency to wander into D flat major. There is another theme in D minor:

All these themes have a bit of a family resemblance. A modulation to, well call it C major (or G major, or some mode or other) as the one-flat key signature disappears, signals an energetic development section:

In which the piano double-octaves its way in a slightly nutty fashion while the orchestra states the opening theme. This development gets more and more interesting as the crazed fairground mood becomes more intense. The orchestra comes to the fore after quite a lot of virtuoso piano writing with this hymn-like theme:

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Which is, of course, an augmented version of the D minor theme we heard before, now in major. This is followed by an extensive cadenza for the piano using the themes we have heard. Following this, inevitably, is the recapitulation with the orchestra recapitulating the themes while the piano offers ornamental decorations above.

All in all, there isn't much wrong with this piece. Sure, it's cheerful, but it was a happy occasion and even Shostakovich is allowed to write the occasional cheerful piece. It breaks no new ground, which is reason enough to condemn it if you are a card-carrying member of the avant-garde, but it is charming and listenable--just like a piano concerto by Mozart.

Let's have a listen. This is the composer himself playing the concerto with the Orchestre National de la Radiodiffusion Française, André Cluytens, conductor

Concerto Guide: Bartók, Piano Concerto No. 1 (1926)

Béla Bartók is one of the most important composers of the first half of the 20th century and, along with Liszt, one of the two most important Hungarian composers. What does "important" mean, in this context? The prevailing ideology (or "practice" if you want a neutral term) during the first half of the 20th century was modernism, which largely meant innovation in the basic materials and structures of music: melody, harmony and rhythm. Bartók is important because he wrote music that was innovative, but also that was influential on other composers and, most importantly, that resonated with audiences strongly enough that it became widely performed. All this adds up to "important".

Now for some details. Bartók was innovative and original in a number of ways. He developed new notational practices such as extending a beam over a barline to indicate a rhythmic grouping. Here the beams for the piano part extend over the barline between the 3/4 and 2/4 measures to show how the phrase should be grouped:

Example from the Piano Concerto No. 1, first movement

Another innovation was, in a context of frequent changes of meter, to write the time signatures very large and centered on each group of instruments. That looks like this:

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Previously the time signature would only appear on each individual stave; showing them like this makes them much more visible for the conductor (this is only done in the score, obviously).

Bartók also used a lot of very unconventional key signatures in his Mikrokosmos for piano, but we don't see that in this piece, where there are no key signatures. The first movement begins with  low Bs in tympani and piano and ends with a big chord of E, B and F#, so not in C major!

The Wikipedia article on this piece, while giving some historical information, is not too revealing about the music itself. Without doing a lot of research to see if there is any kind of consensus on this, the first movement appears to me to be in sonata-allegro form. It is hard for anyone writing a piano concerto to completely ignore the Mozart concertos.

The piece begins, unusually enough, with the piano and tympani on a B pedal accompanying the orchestra that presents fragments of a theme. The piano then presents it more fully:

Notice the repeated note motif, the shifting time signature and the scale passages with chromatic interpolations. Later there is an important anapest motif in the winds. In this example, in dialogue with the piano, note the beams crossing over the barlines:

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(An anapest, taken from prosody terminology, is a rhythmic figure with two short notes followed by a longer one.)

To end sections, Bartók uses this vamping figure instead of a conventional cadence:

This new theme appears, related to the anapest motif:

Then, in a different tempo, we have this theme, presented in the piano:

These themes are then given a development and here is a fairly typical page:

As you can see, this concerto is pretty challenging for everyone: the pianist, the orchestra and the conductor.

After this, I hear something resembling a recapitulation and then the first movement ends with an abbreviated version of that cadence figure, using the same notes.

Bartók's method seems to be to use the broad structural outlines of classical forms, but to fill them with entirely different material: much more dissonant and metrically complex. His music has an intense expressivity that is very compelling, which probably accounts for a lot of his enduring popularity.

Now let's listen to the whole piece. This is the French pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet with the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Vladimir Jurowski:

Concerto Guide: Prokofiev, Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor, op. 16

One of the more surprising developments in 20th century music was the renewed attention paid to the concerto form. Earlier concerto composers, like Vivaldi with over 500, were very prolific. Both Bach and Mozart wrote a remarkable number of extremely fine concertos. So did Beethoven, but he also initiated some trends that echoed through the 19th century. By the end, major composers like Brahms were writing a single, very long, violin concerto, like Beethoven instead of several like Bach and Mozart. Brahms, a pianist, only wrote two for his own instrument while Beethoven wrote five and Mozart, not counting arrangements from J. C. Bach, wrote twenty-three! Even Franz Liszt, probably the greatest piano virtuoso of the 19th century only wrote three for his instrument.

So while some composers, like Sibelius whose Violin Concerto we discussed two weeks ago, continued to write just one violin concerto, most 20th century composers wrote at least two, even though it was not their instrument. And the piano concerto flourished with multiple ones by Bartók, Prokofiev, Shostakovich and even Stravinsky.

If I were to speculate, I would propose that the existential stresses of the 20th century found an appropriate vehicle in the concerto for solo instrument and orchestra. If you feel that you as an individual are surrounded by hostile and implacable forces (and frankly, for a lot of the 20th century, this was simply true), then the solo concerto might be the ideal medium to express this. In the 19th century, the solo concerto, like the symphony, expressed the aspirations and ideals of the mass audience of the bourgeoisie. Carl Dahlhaus mentions the strange restoration of the string quartet in the 20th century and I see something similar in the concerto which gained a new lease on life as the alienation of the individual vs the mass became a keen social and metaphysical theme in the 20th century. [Dahlhaus, Nineteenth-Century Music, p. 28] Mind you, the 20th century concerto, like its 19th century predecessors, did not lack in virtuosity. In fact, the one we are going to look at today is famously one of the most challenging ever written.

The Piano Concerto No. 2 by Prokofiev, completed in 1913, was dedicated to a friend who had recently committed suicide. It has a very original and compelling opening, quiet, but with the feeling of the calm before the storm:

What a contrast with the typical 19th century piano concerto, whose opening usually features the piano, fortissimo, in a very virtuoso passage. The narrante indication in the piano part is interesting. It means "narratively" as if you are telling a story. This hearkens back a bit to the Ballades of Chopin that have a similar feel, though it is new in a concerto context. Here is how that theme continues, accompanied by pianissimo strings:

The allegretto arrives and the orchestra has still not had a strong tutti. The piano again has all the thematic material:

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The opening andantino returns, setting up the piano cadenza and still the orchestra has not come to the fore. What the orchestra has done is provided an often eerie context for the piano, accompanying with variant textures as a kind of landscape over which the piano moves.

Here is some of the piano cadenza, near the opening and notated on three staves:

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And as the cadenza continues, the texture gets even more complex and virtuosic:

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This cadenza, which starts at the six minute mark in the clip I am about to play, goes on for four minutes! This is a new thing in 20th century concertos and sometimes, as in the Violin Concerto No. 1 by Shostakovich and the Guitar Concerto by Villa-Lobos, the cadenza becomes a separate movement.

Finally, as the orchestra returns at the end of the cadenza, we get a full-blooded tutti:

And what a tutti! Unleashing the brass section, fortissimo, gives an enormous weight to this, the climax of the movement. All that is left is a brief coda in which the opening theme is recapitulated. The movement ends piano. Those three pages of fortissimo at the end of the cadenza constitute the only orchestral tutti in the whole movement.

The Scherzo, vivace is a whirlwind of never-stopping sixteenth notes in the piano with, again, the orchestra in a largely subsidiary role. The Intermezzo (this is a four movement concerto) is Prokofiev at his most Russian. The heavy and dolorous march is a perfect foil to the eerie first movement and the scintillating second. This is also the first chance that the percussion section get to do much.

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The piano contributes some hurtling decorations:

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but in this movement, the orchestra gets an equal share of the material:

The finale, Allegro tempestoso is just as tempestuous as you might expect:

But please, place no credence in the very odd commentary on this movement in the Wikipedia article. Trust me, composers do not write passages in 4/4 that are to be played in 7/8:

Five octaves above the intermezzo's end note, a fortissimo tirade pounces out of the sky, written in four-four-time but played in seven-eight (one-two-three-four-one-two-three etc.).

Who writes this stuff? The syncopation in the strings is not matched in the winds or piano, which is why it is properly notated in 4/4.

And that's all I want to say about this concerto. It has been one of my favorite concertos since a composer friend of mine lent me a box of all the Prokofiev piano concertos, oh, decades ago. Here is Yuja Wang doing a terrific job of it. The Verbier Festival Orchestra is conducted by Charles Dutoit:

Concerto Guide: Tchaikovsky, Piano Concerto No. 1 in B flat minor

The Piano Concerto No. 1 by Tchaikovsky was completed in 1875, though it underwent some revisions later on. A recent recording of it returns to the original version, but we usually hear the revised one. If you recall, the 18th century concerto always began with the orchestra stating the main theme with the entry of the soloist delayed until this was complete. Mozart broke with this on occasion, having the solo piano interrupt the orchestra, and Beethoven began a couple of concertos with the piano soloist. But it was Robert Schumann who laid out a new model for the Romantic concerto, giving the orchestra a single chord and having the solo piano present the opening theme. A number of composers we have looked at, including Grieg and Liszt, used this kind of opening while Brahms returned to the earlier format of delaying the entry of the soloist.

Tchaikovsky, in his first piano concerto, does something different. As the piano is now so powerful an instrument, both physically and culturally, it no longer has to assert itself so starkly. In an interesting turnabout, the orchestra is given the opening theme, but the piano accompanies them, all of them, with a huge chordal figure before taking over the theme itself. Here is how that looks:

After a brief four-measure introduction in the brass, the melody is given to the first violins and cellos--one of Tchaikovsky's great tunes. But this unusual effect, a single instrument accompanying a whole, large orchestra with huge arpeggiated chords (arpeggiated in large clumps, mind you) is a unique effect and makes for a powerful beginning. Then, as I said, the piano takes over the theme:

The Wikipedia article on the concerto says that "One of the most prominent differences between the original and final versions is that in the opening section, the octave chords played by the pianist, over which the orchestra plays the famous theme, were originally written as arpeggios." But didn't I just say that this version, the revised one, has huge arpeggiated chords at the beginning? Of course, there are lots of different kinds of arpeggios. The term is derived from the Italian word for harp, who typically has these kinds of textures:

This example is for piano, but harp arpeggios look just the same. However, to a theorist, prolonging a harmony by spreading it out in different octaves is also an arpeggiation and I was using the word in that sense. Playing the notes of a B-flat minor chord individually, as on a harp or guitar, or in solid groups of six or seven notes, and extending this harmony over one or more octaves for several measures is an arpeggiation to a theorist. Performers think of it differently, though and contrast what they call arpeggios with "solid chords", which is what the piano is playing here. This is because, to a performer, they present different problems of execution. Theorists aren't interested in execution, but they are interested in what the listener hears.

Even from the very first performance, in Boston in 1875 with Hans von Bülow as soloist, the work was a big success. At the premiere, the audience response was so enthusiastic that they had to repeat the finale! I witnessed a response like this myself on one occasion. In Toronto in the late 1970s, John Williams premiered a guitar concerto by Leo Brouwer with the composer conducting and the audience, composed largely of guitarists attending a festival, were ecstatic and delivered a five minute standing ovation. Finally, after having returned to the stage often enough to have shaken the hand of every single member of the orchestra, Williams and Brouwer decided to play the slow movement again. So yes, these things happen. Just not very often!

Without going into further analysis of the piece (for a non-technical one you might look here), let's listen to it. Here is a classic performance with a young Martha Argerich and Charles Dutoit conducting the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande in 1975:

Concerto Guide: Brahms, Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor, op. 15

I'm sorry for the out-of-sequence post, but I misremembered when this concerto was written, thinking it was later than it was. Last week I talked about the Piano Concerto of Edvard Grieg, which was composed in 1868. I should instead have talked about the Piano Concerto No. 1 of Johannes Brahms, which was composed in 1858. But never mind, I will just backtrack a bit.

Brahms comes in the second generation of 19th century composers, after the first generation, born around 1810, that Charles Rosen called "the Romantic Generation" in an excellent book on the period. That first generation, made up of Chopin, Liszt, Berlioz, Mendelssohn and Schumann, were all revolutionaries in one sense or another: both Chopin and Liszt revolutionized the techniques and expressivity of the piano, Berlioz cut loose from the central European traditions, Mendelssohn absorbed and cushioned the influence of Beethoven and Schumann unleashed the irrational side of Romanticism. Some of the consequences of these revolutionary changes were a loosening and diffusing of instrumental form. Large instrumental works became fluid and suggestive instead of taut and insistent as they were with the last of the Classical masters, Beethoven and Schubert.

It was left to Brahms to revive and reestablish the large Classical forms like the symphony and concerto which had both been transformed in their structure. The symphony had been largely supplanted by the rather more wandering "tone poem" of the New German School and the concerto had become more virtuosic and less substantial in its structure. Brahms set out to rectify both these forms and the first work in which he saw public success in this endeavor was his Piano Concerto No. 1. He was a young man of only twenty-five when it was premiered in Hannover in 1859.

This is a large, substantial work in which the orchestra is an equal partner in the musical development, not a mere colorful accompaniment as in some other Romantic concertos. Brahms' model was fairly clearly Beethoven rather than Mozart and this concerto is even longer, at around 50 minutes, than Beethoven's last piano concerto, at around 40 minutes. An indicator of the way Brahms thought of the work is the fact that during one stage of its lengthy genesis, he conceived it as a four-movement symphony. In its final form, however, it became a three-movement concerto in the standard Classical layout: a large, maestoso first movement, an adagio in ternary form and a final rondo.

I won't try and and pull out all the themes of the piece for you. It begins with a rather stormy orchestral introduction:

Which does NOT lead immediately to virtuoso flourishes on the piano as in so many of the other Romantic concertos. Brahms restores the balance between the soloist and orchestra, which here gets a lengthy introduction before the soloist enters with this rather subdued theme:

The piano does get to start the last movement, the rondo, with real brio:

And now I think we should have a listen. This is Hélène Grimaud, piano, with the Southwest German Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Michael Gielen:

Concerto Guide: Edvard Grieg, Piano Concerto in A minor, op. 16

If this is Tuesday, this must be Belgium, goes the old joke about package tours of Europe. Actually, Belgium was last Tuesday when I talked about the Vieuxtemps Violin Concerto No. 5. This week we are in Norway, well, Denmark to be more precise, where the 24-year-old composer wrote this very popular concerto when on holiday from his native Norway. The year was 1868, nine years after the Vieuxtemps. This is the only concerto Grieg wrote and it is one of the most popular piano concertos. Arthur Rubinstein relates in his autobiography that at a fairly young age he memorized the whole concerto in eight hours!

If you will recall, I mentioned in my discussion of the Schumann Piano Concerto that one of its innovations, the big, forte chords hammered out by the solo piano at the very beginning, was very influential on later composers. It is rare to find a popular 19th century piano concerto that does not begin with a similar gesture--and it is almost never found in pre-19th century concertos. Here is how the Grieg begins:

Compare to the Schumann opening:

They are even in the same key. Of course the details are different. Schumann tonicizes several different keys: A minor, C major (with a secondary dominant to viiº7!), B flat, A minor, and D minor to mention a few. The Grieg is actually much simpler, harmonically, with that stirring gesture only involving two harmonies: V and i. Grieg does add one interesting touch: the piece actually begins with a tympani roll that crescendos into that opening orchestral chord. Here is the main theme of the first movement, as it appears in the piano quite early in the movement:

This is more akin to a motif than a theme: two measures repeated at a different pitch and that's it. Mind you, as Beethoven and Haydn have shown over and over, a brief, succinct motif is great material for a movement. Some of the strongest elements in the theme are the dotted rhythm and the syncopation in the second half of the first and third measures.

Grieg heard the Schumann concerto in either 1858 or 59 played by Clara Schumann and was obviously influenced by it. Other influences seem to be Norwegian folk music, especially in the last movement. Here is the theme of that movement, often compared to the Halling, a Norwegian folk dance accompanied by fiddle:

There is a fine video of Rubinstein playing the concerto, the orchestra conducted by a young André Previn:

And for contrast, here is a recent performance by Khatia Buniatishvili:

Concerto Guide: Franz Liszt, Piano Concerto No. 1 in E-flat major

It is hard to place this composition, chronologically. According to Wikipedia:

Franz Liszt composed his Piano Concerto No. 1 in E-flat major, S.124 over a 26-year period; the main themes date from 1830, while the final version dates 1849. It premiered in Weimar on February 17, 1855, with Liszt at the piano and Hector Berlioz conducting.

Do we date it from when when the first themes were sketched, in which case it would be among the very first romantic concertos, even pre-dating Berlioz' Harold en Italie of 1834? Or do we date it from when the final version was completed in 1849, in which case it comes after the Schumann Piano Concerto and the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto? Or from the premiere in 1855? Isn't it odd that the premiere occurred so late?

Liszt's was a complex and contradictory career. He was, at the same time, both the greatest virtuoso (on the piano, at least) of his time and an avant-garde composer (again, of his time). Interestingly enough, it was the radical nature of his themes and harmonies with their stress on the tritone and chromatic scale, that rescued his compositions from the mere shallow brilliance of the style brillant of Thalberg and Kalkbrenner. As far as the concerto goes, around the 1840s the form began to absorb that of the more-prestigious symphony, producing a "symphonic concerto". One of the symptoms of this process is the appearance of a scherzo between the slow movement and the finale. We see this in the Liszt First Piano Concerto:

1. Allegro maestoso
2. Quasi adagio
3. Allegretto vivace - Allegro animato
4. Allegro marziale animato

Going back to the genesis of this concerto, Liszt's early career was as a touring virtuoso, only the second in music history, following the example of Paganini. But by the late 1840s this was beginning to pall and in September 1847 he essentially quit his career as a piano virtuoso in favor of spending time on composition. So why didn't he complete this piano concerto when it would have been useful to him? The answer might be that Liszt actually had no need of an orchestra on stage with him! With his original compositions and a host of transcriptions and arrangements, he was entirely self-sufficient! By 1855, and the premiere of this concerto, he was appearing more as a composer than as a pianist.

The concerto, while containing a fiendishly difficult virtuoso piano part, has a lot of other interesting features. One particularly admired by Bartók is the use of the cyclic principle: themes return in varied form throughout the work. The finale in particular is a triumph of virtuoso variation technique with its use of the four themes of the Adagio and Scherzo (third movement), transformed in different rhythms and tempi. The main theme of the first movement also returns in the finale to frame the whole work. The textures are also remarkably varied, not only in the polyrhythms of the piano part, but also in the use of solo orchestral instruments in dialogue with the piano. My favorite part is the trio of piano, flute and triangle that forms part of the third movement.

Now let's listen to a particularly stunning version of the piece. This is Martha Argerich delivering a ferocious performance with Christoph von Dohnányi conducting the RSO in Berlin in 1981:

Concerto Guide: Schumann Piano Concerto in A minor, op. 54

At the risk of possibly disappointing some readers I am going to skip over concertos by Paganini and Chopin that would come next chronologically (the first Paganini concerto would come before Berlioz, having been composed in Italy around 1818) as they are largely vehicles for virtuoso display while the other concertos we are covering, while also vehicles for virtuosity, are more than that. Perhaps this is my own personal bias, but I find mere virtuosity, that is to say fast scales and arpeggios racing around on the instrument, when protracted, to be some of the most boring music imaginable. Virtuosity is an essential element of a concerto, but for a satisfying aesthetic experience, there must be other elements of equal interest--at least! The eternal model for the concerto might just be the Mozart piano concertos that are always beguiling, surprising and structurally powerful as well has having enough virtuosity to keep them sparkling.

In 1845, Robert Schumann completed his one-and-only piano concerto, though there are two other works by him for piano and orchestra. The concerto medium was rarely the focus of Schumann's energies--compared to his enormous output of lieder, solo piano music and even chamber music, his concertos for solo instrument and orchestra are few, amounting to the A minor Piano Concerto, the Cello Concerto (also in A minor) and the very late Violin Concerto that took until 1937 to be premiered, due to its being buried by the dedicatee Joseph Joaquim.

The Piano Concerto is not only a fine piece, well-established in the repertoire, it has also influenced a number of other composers of concertos for piano. There are probably a couple of reasons for this: first, this is really the first important Romantic era piano concerto. The ones by Franz Liszt, while there are sketches going back decades, were not completed until 1849 and later. Second, Schumann uses a number of devices that were enormously influential, such as the striking opening with the hammered-out forte E in the orchestra answered by the big dotted-rhythm chords that descend over most of the piano's range. Here is what that looks like:

A lot of the energy of this piano phrase comes from its tonicizing in succession F major in first inversion, then root position, then D minor, then A minor, then F major in first inversion again and so on. This is brought to a halt by a very powerful V7-i cadence in A minor.

This kind of opening was later used by both Grieg and Rachmaninoff. Even the Piano Concerto No. 1 by Tchaikovsky has an opening that echoes a bit the same idea: that the individual, represented by the piano, is no longer an equal partner with the orchestra, but may even dominate it. In the Schumann, Grieg and Rachmaninoff concerti, after a sonorous downbeat by the orchestra, the piano immediately leaps in and commandeers the movement. Even in the Tchaikovsky, while giving the theme to the orchestra, the piano accompanies them with such huge, resounding chords that it sounds easily as powerful as the orchestra itself. And in short order, the piano takes the dominant role.

So Schumann was not only first out of the gate with a Romantic piano concerto, he also hit upon some characteristic strategies that other composers would make use of. Apart from the commanding opening given to the piano, the other important innovation used by Schumann is the thematic transformation of the opening theme, given first to the oboe:

Then to the piano:

This whole statement is actually a 16-measure period with the oboe ending with a half-cadence and the piano with a perfect authentic cadence. This theme appears in different guises. In the piano in C:

A very abbreviated version in the Clarinet (in A):

And so on. The idea of using transformations of a single theme to unite a movement or a whole piece while not unprecedented (think of the Bach Art of Fugue) was rather an innovation used in this way and in this genre. It would be taken up by a host of later 19th century composers, very much including Franz Liszt.

Now let's listen to a performance. The attractive soloist, Khatia Buniatishvili, in her very striking dress, wasn't the only reason I chose this version. It is a particularly crisp clip both for visual and audio. Here she is with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Paavo Järvi:

Concerto Guide: Beethoven, Piano Concerto No. 4 in G major, op. 58

The next concerto on my evolving list is the Piano Concerto No. 4 by Beethoven. I was all set to do a post on it, but then I remembered that I already did one back in Nov. 2011. Here is the link.

I wouldn't add too much to it today except to note that the opening phrase in the solo piano--yes, this piano concerto uniquely begins with the entire first phrase in the solo instrument--is answered with the dominant of the relative minor: by B major, in other words. E minor is also the key of the middle movement which is possibly the most extraordinary concerto movement ever written. I think I will just refer you back to this earlier post instead of doing it all again. I have gone back and updated the video clips.

I want to mention that next week I will be delving into the Beethoven Violin Concerto which is another extraordinary piece and probably the one that has inspired so many composers since to write large violin concertos.

Concerto Guide: Mozart Concerto for Piano and Orchestra in D minor, K. 466

As I mentioned last week, the two great concertos K. 466 and 467 are a bit akin to the two last symphonies of Mozart, no. 40 in G minor and no. 41 in C major. Unlike later composers, Haydn and Mozart both used minor keys fairly rarely and pieces in minor tend to have a special intensity. There are only two piano concertos in minor out of the over twenty that Mozart wrote: this one and K. 491 in C minor. Similarly, out of the over forty symphonies from Mozart there are only two in minor, the 40th and the 25th, both in G minor.

It was the D minor concerto along with a few other remarkable works like the 40th symphony and Don Giovanni that created the mythic persona of Mozart that the 19th century was so enamored of. As Charles Rosen says:

It is one of the fullest realizations of that aspect of Mozart which the nineteenth century quite rightly names 'daemonic', and which, for so long, made a balanced assessment of the rest of his work so difficult.

Because the daemonic is just one side of Mozart, a very complex figure.

This concerto is not necessarily a greater composition than many others from around this time, but it does have considerable power, some of which has to do with an impeccable control of rhythmic impetus. The very opening has considerable punch with its French overture like upbeats and syncopated accompaniment:

Click to enlarge

When this orchestral theme returns, this time joined by the solo piano, we see another rhythmic layer added in the sixteenth notes in the piano:

And soon the harmonic tempo quickens as well with the one harmony per bar changing to two:

There are a host of other details in this passage that include a stacking up of wind entrances, doubling of rhythmic values in the violins and violas, and movement of the sixteenth notes to the left hand of the piano. This is all done in a subtle, overlapping manner but the general effect is that of a building excitement. It might not be too far-fetched to see this kind of passage as being the model for the famous "Rossini crescendo".

Let's listen to this first movement performed and conducted by Mitsuko Uchida. The passage I was excerpting above appears around the 3:49 mark:

Another very revealing comment by Rosen, found in his The Classical Style p. 233 is:

No concerto before K. 466 exploits so well the latent pathetic nature of the form--the contrast and struggle of one individual voice against many. The most characteristic phrases of the solo and the orchestra are never interchanged without being rewritten and reshaped: the piano never plays the menacing opening in its syncopated form, but transforms it into something rhythmically more defined and more agitated; the orchestra never plays the recitative-like phrase with which the piano opens, and which it repeats throughout the development section.

He is referring to this passage, when the solo piano first enters:

This comes at the 3:16 mark in the above performance.

Instrumental solos prior to this, whether in concertos by Vivaldi or Bach, or even in symphonies by Haydn, were really about simple musical contrasts of dynamic, texture and timbre. They carried little or no existential weight. Often they were written as a compliment to a gifted soloist, enabling them to show off their virtuosity. But as we see in this concerto particularly, Mozart went far, far beyond these simple contrasts and goals. The introverted entrance of the piano is itself a contradiction of the normally virtuosic role of the piano soloist that we are used to even in previous concertos by Mozart. Instead, the significance of every musical detail becomes more than merely musical in a technical sense. It was this that the Romantics loved and responded to in Mozart. There is a dramatic intensity to this music that is rather a new thing in instrumental forms. This came naturally to Mozart who was, uniquely, also the master of opera.

After this concerto by Mozart and ones by Beethoven that were obviously inspired by this kind of heightened dramatic treatment, the concerto form was forever altered. This concerto was a favorite of Beethoven who not only played it himself, but composed a cadenza for it (as Mozart did not leave one). This concerto was premiered on the 10th of February, 1785 and, as we learn from a letter from Mozart's father, Leopold, may have been played with no rehearsal! Mozart only recorded the completion of the work in his journal on the same day.

Let's listen to another performance of the piece. Here is Malcolm Bilson on fortepiano: