Stunning piano concerto openings

[Peter1953]

I've just visited an informative website: www.piano-concertos.org
Many names and concertos I've never heard of, but one of our favourite unsungs is missing: Johann Rufinatscha

[JimL]

Heard snippets of the opening of the Kunneke concerto.  I'm looking forward to hearing it on my home computer because my girlfriend stubbornly refuses to get high speed internet, and her AOL dial-up has to constantly stop and rebuffer every two seconds!  I, too liked what I heard.  This brings up an interesting point.  Usually, if a work is referred to as "No. 1", is it not implicit that there is a "No. 2" out there somewhere?  If it was Kunneke's only work in the form, would we not be calling it simply "Kunneke Piano Concerto in A-Flat Major, Op. 36"?  Which brings me to another stunning PC opening:  Brull #2.  Somewhat derivative of Beethoven's 4th, but I like the dialogue with the timpani and the buildup to the first big tutti pronouncement of the theme.

[thalbergmad]

I've just visited an informative website: www.piano-concertos.org
Many names and concertos I've never heard of, but one of our favourite unsungs is missing: Johann Rufinatscha

There is also this one as well:

http://20th-century-piano-concertos.org/

Indeed there are some missing, but an excellent resource to give one some ideas.

Thal

[Peter1953]

I'm looking forward to hearing it on my home computer because my girlfriend stubbornly refuses to get high speed internet, and her AOL dial-up has to constantly stop and rebuffer every two seconds!  I, too liked what I heard.  This brings up an interesting point.  Usually, if a work is referred to as "No. 1", is it not implicit that there is a "No. 2" out there somewhere?

Very inconvenient, Jim. Maybe you can ask your girlfriend to move in, or get another girlfriend?   

De German version of Wikipedia only speaks of the Piano Concerto in A flat major, view at http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eduard_K%C3%BCnneke#Werke

[Gareth Vaughan]

I can't find any information on a 2nd PC by Kunneke, so it may well be that it was published as No. 1, but he never got round to writing another. A similar thing happened with the Choral Symphony by Holst - it was published as "First Choral Symphony, Op. 41", but the work had no successor.

[JimL]

Very inconvenient, Jim. Maybe you can ask your girlfriend to move in, or get another girlfriend?   

I think it likelier that I'll move in with her within the next couple of months and bring my computer with me.  Then I'll pay her for Time-Warner Roadrunner, and let her keep her Winky-Dink little AOL for herself.  She's more comfortable with that anyway.  She's kind of a Luddite when it comes to matters technological.

[Michael Schlechtriem]

Here is  a legal download of the Künneke- Concerto. It is a Radio Broadcast and a Radio- Production and so abolutely legal. By the way: It is far better played.......
http://rs92gc.rapidshare.com/files/294183474/K__nneke.zip

[DennisS]

Hello Michael Schlechtriem

Thank you for the link to downloading the Kunneke PC. However when I input the link you gave, the following message came up :

Error- the file could not be found. Please check the download link.

Can you tell me what I should do to download the PC.

Kind regards
Dennis

[thalbergmad]

It worked for me Dennis, so i am not sure what is wrong.

Re-listened to the Stavenhagen concerto this morning and that has a rather stunning opening. In fact, it has a rather stunning everything IMO.

Brahms can go hang himself.

Thal

[Michael Schlechtriem]

Hello Dennis,
there is nothing wrong with the link, maybe you just did not copy and paste it correct.

Best,
Michael

[DennisS]

Hello Michael

You are absolutely right, I did not copy and paste correctly! Have successfully downloaded the pc and am looking forward to listening to it later this morning. Many thanks for the link.

Cheers
Dennis

[chill319]

Lots of fun reading all of your responses. Following up on Steven Eldredge's post, those who haven't heard the Beethoven 4th with Serkin and Schneider at Marlboro are in for a treat. It may be the most spiritually deep recording ever of the B4 opening. Credit is due to all involved, Wow is all I can say.

Historically, the "concerto problem" (how to do something with the concerto form other than an update on what Mozart did) was big news in the 1840s. Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto is probably the most famous solution. For the piano concerto, Hiller seems to have been the man who figured out a way to thoroughly integrate piano and orchestra, going well beyond the introductory flourishes of Beethoven's Emperor. That's why Schumann was so impressed by Hiller's second and adopted its tactics it in his own Concerto (dedicated to Hiller). At least in its time, the opening of Hiller's second concerto was arresting. Later, of course, Grieg used Schumann as a template. The rest, including Tchaikovsky, is history. Hiller's Konzertstueck is, following Weber's, an alternative response to the "concerto problem," and currently my favorite of his concertos. Entirely sunny, though, unlike Brahms 1. (Vox has a decent performance with Jerome Rose.)

One thing the best 19th-century concerto composers strove for was purity of taste -- freedom from banality, sentimentality, and anything insincere. The problem (for other composers!) with Brahms's first is that it goes so far beyond taste. How many previous concertos had originally been conceived as symphonies?

[JimL]

Welcome, chill!  Interesting to note the temporal relationship of the Hiller F-sharp Minor PC to the Mendelssohn E Minor VC - I believe the Hiller antedates it by a couple of years.  Mozart, of course, experimented with early solo entry in his K. 271 Jeunhomme Concerto, but not until Beethoven 4 was the idea of having the solo start first ever considered in the Classical era.  I wonder if Baroque concertos were still being performed in public?  There are numerous examples of early solo entry and starting with the soloists in that repertoire (e.g. the Vivaldi Concerto for 4 Violins in B Minor which Bach transcribed and transposed for 4 harpsichords.)  Most Baroque music that I can think of died out in terms of public performance until Mendelssohn's revival of Bach's St. Matthew Passion in 1829.

[Alan Howe]

Indeed, welcome to the forum, chill319!

[sdtom]

A few more concerted pieces for piano and orchestra that deserve mentioning -
Robin Milford - Fishing by Moonlight for piano and strings
Jean Françaix - Concertino
Gerald Finzi - Eclogue in F major for piano and string orchestra
Busoni - Indian Fantasy
Raff - 'Ode au Printemps' for piano and orchestra
Rubinstein - Fantaisie Op.84, Concertstück Op.113(marvelous), Caprice Russe
Goedicke - Concertstück
Arensky - Fantasia on Russian folksongs


I just got the new recording on Naxos of works of Lyapunov and I've fallen in love with the Rhapsody on Ukranian Themes. Yet another composer to explore.
Thhomas
Saint-Saëns -  Wedding Cake
Vianna da Motta - Fantasia Dramática
Lyapunov - Rhapsody on Ukrainian Themes(words can't describe the beauty of this GEM!)
Sterndale Bennett - Caprice in E major(you won't stop smiling)
Ignaz Brüll - Andante and Allegro Op 88
Ernst Mielck - Concert Piece For Piano & Orchestra
....and so on!!!

Its curious that Nobody has mentioned the almost pastoral Piano Concerto in E flat by Sergei Ivanovich Taneyev. Its long, incomplete(only 2 movements), almost monothematic and utterly charming!