Piano Concertos by Chopin's pupils

[Mark Thomas]

JPC are advertising a new Accord CD featuring Tellefsens' Piano Concerto No.1 and the Konzertstück of Carl Filtsch. The soloist is Hubert Rutkowski and the Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra are conducted by Lukasz Borowicz. Details and music extracts at jpc here and on Accord's own web site here. At only 52 minutes it's pretty short measure for a full price CD, though.

[Alan Howe]

...and Filtsch died at the age of 14 (nearly 15), so I'm not sure whether we're talking of a significant find here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Filtsch
BTW the CD also includes an Overture in D major by Filtsch (track 4); track 5 is the Konzertstück.

[thalbergmad]

The Filtsch has been recorded before, but I don't remember if it was commercially released.

Pretty impressive for a 14 year old if I recall correctly. Full of youthful vigour but will not tug the heart strings.

Thal

[Mark Thomas]

I have a copy of a 2007 radio broadcast of the Filtsch Konzertstück and wrote in another thread here that it "is very pleasant, if not exactly earth shattering." It lasts 17 minutes and is, as one would expect, early romantic in style, influenced more by Mendelssohn than Chopin I'd say. The soloist is Janina Hofmann accompanied by a (perfectly good) student orchestra under the baton of Martin Wettges. If anyone is interested I'll happily upload it.

[JimL]

Count me as interested.

[Richard Moss]

Mark,

Me too - I seem especially attracted for the moment to works written by younger composers just 'cos it leaves me in awe of their talent - the result doesn't have to be a masterpiece to be a most welcome addition to the UC uploads.

Many tks

Richard

[Mark Thomas]

O.K. I'll upload it tomorrow.

[Mark Thomas]

The Filtsch Konzertstück recording link is now in the Downloads board.

[JimL]

Anybody who can't hear the obvious debt Filtsch owes to the Allegro maestoso of his teacher's E minor concerto doesn't know the concerto.  Although pianistically, Filtsch still hadn't learned his master's style yet.  The piano writing sounds more like Hummel than Chopin.

[Alan Howe]

...the obvious debt Filtsch owes to the Allegro maestoso of his teacher's E minor concerto...

You could say that he 'filtsched' it...

[Mark Thomas]

Ouch!

[chill319]

The piano writing sounds more like Hummel than Chopin.

I came to the recording (thanks, Mark!) wondering if there would be echoes of Kalkbrenner as well.

In the event, as JimL suggests, Fitsch's piano writing in the first-movement exposition matches Chopin's mechanically, bar for bar, both in harmonic progression and keyboard manner. Where Chopin has a passage in a simple classical style, so does his pupil; Where Chopin has nocturnelike passages, so does his pupil, right down to the beats that roulades fall on.

This is student imitatio pure and simple. A rather unimaginative display of it, too. Alternatively, you could listen to the Fitsch the way you listen to a jazz pianist play a standard. You can hear all of Chopin's themes, but they've been fragmented and slightly rearranged and intermingled with other notes.

The close imitation even extends to orchestration! Who knew Chopin would be a mentor in that art?

[Alan Howe]

Message from Richard moved from Downloads:

Mark,

Tks for the prompt upload.  Looking forward to hearing it.

Best wishes,

Richard

[Alan Howe]

And one from Dennis too:

Mark

I thank you also for the prompt download. Am looking forward to listening to it.

Regards
Dennis

[JimL]

The piano writing sounds more like Hummel than Chopin.

I came to the recording (thanks, Mark!) wondering if there would be echoes of Kalkbrenner as well.

In the event, as JimL suggests, Fitsch's piano writing in the first-movement exposition matches Chopin's mechanically, bar for bar, both in harmonic progression and keyboard manner. Where Chopin has a passage in a simple classical style, so does his pupil; Where Chopin has nocturnelike passages, so does his pupil, right down to the beats that roulades fall on.

This is student imitatio pure and simple. A rather unimaginative display of it, too. Alternatively, you could listen to the Fitsch the way you listen to a jazz pianist play a standard. You can hear all of Chopin's themes, but they've been fragmented and slightly rearranged and intermingled with other notes.

The close imitation even extends to orchestration! Who knew Chopin would be a mentor in that art?

Actually, the pianism, or to be more precise the harmonic inflections in it are indeed more closely related to the classicism of Hummel than to Chopin.  For example, where Chopin would resolve a V-I cadence with a III-I melodic resolution in the treble (basically making it a V6-I progression), Filtsch still has the classical voice-leading of the older master.  There is a great deal less chromaticism in general; most of the chords are basic, diatonic harmony sans diminished and augmented chords.  And I actually found Filtsch's orchestration to be a tad better than Chopin's.