Henselt Piano Concerto

[Rob H]

I haven't checked the concerto but Wild's recording of Paderewski's Polish fantaisie has many touch ups to it/flourishes in parts where either the piano doesn't play or has a simpler original part. It sounds very effective, even if not everyone agrees with works being fiddled with.
He also added final flourishes to the Scharwenka doesn't he? I seem to remember the orchestra ends one of the movements, not piano and orchestra. For that matter (and getting back on topic) Lewenthal adds piano to the final bars of the Henselt first movement that is otherwise just orchestra.

[adriano]

For the purists in here: at the time these "Romantic" composers performed their concertos, it was a custom to add flourishes and to improvise, so what?

[Gareth Vaughan]

Lewenthal adds piano to the final bars of the Henselt first movement that is otherwise just orchestra.

Frank Cooper did the same with his recording of Dreyschock's Concert Piece on Genesis - very effective too. As "hadrianus" so rightly remarks, when it comes to RPCs the text should not be considered sacrosanct.

[adriano]

... and, as far as I remember having been told, Michael Ponti also sustained the orchestra just for fun in the finale of Raff's Concerto. Not sure whether that was used as a final take, cannot compare with a score...

[JimL]

The piano part that Lewenthal added to the final tutti at the end of the first movement of the Henselt concerto was actually a written-out "cadenza" to resolve the piano part in the tonic (it ends on D-flat) composed by Franz Liszt, or so I read somewhere a long time ago.  And Lewenthal virtually recomposed the final measures of the finale of Scharwenka PC 2 in order to omit the quotes from the first movement (which he failed to do completely - the tutti that he left in was almost verbatim from the first movement, just before the cadenza). 

[giles.enders]

Today 12 May, is the two hundredth anniversary of Adolph Von Henselt's birth.  Please give his piano concerto a spin, you won't be disappointed !

[Jonathan]

Going back to JimL's post in late March (which I missed the first time around), Liszt also wrote a tiny album leaf (running to just 8 bars!) based on the theme of the second movement of Henselt's concerto (catalogue number S167p) - it was published by the Liszt Society in 2013 and underneath Liszt writes:
"Motiv des wunderbaren Larghetto in A.Henselts Concert" and "Dem componiston verbleibt / 40 Jahren verhrungsvoll / und freundschaftlich ergebenst - F. Liszt".  This is dated May 1883.  It also says at the end of the last written bar "immer schon under schoner!"
Perhaps someone who did German could translate this for me - I have a rough idea but it's probably wrong!! 

[pcc]

I grew up with the Lewenthal recording of the Henselt and loved it; the second movement is as beautiful as Liszt evidently felt.  After hearing the Ponti and Hamelin recordings, and studying the score, I think anyone who can get to the third movement with any energy left is near superhuman.  As I grew to know the piece better, I think Lewenthal was just plain exhausted by the time he got to that monstrous coda, and Ponti was getting close too in his version.  Hamelin gets through very well, but I don't remember the hair-raising "is he going to make it?" excitement that's in the other versions, especially in the run-up-&-down to the thundering octaves in the final bars.  I very much want to hear the Japanese recording now that I know about it.

Incidentally, Lewenthal made an excellent observation in stating that one of the hurdles in the Henselt is that the orchestration is quite heavy; it's certainly as full-bodied as the Litolff and Liszt concertos, if not more so (the trombones are prominent in all three movements, for instance, and the horn writing is lavish and pretty tricky).  I also think the orchestral writing is extraordinarily accomplished considering that Henselt wrote so little for the orchestra; it's colourful, inventive, and by no means simply functional orchestral accompaniment.

[JimL]

So far, the only recording of the Henselt that I've ever encountered where it's possible to hear what the piano is playing in the bass register at the very end of the finale, is the Ponti.  In both the Lewenthal and the Hamelin versions, those 5 orchestral chords just seem to drown out the piano, leaving nothing but a barely detectable rumble.  Maybe that's how Henselt intended it, but I don't think so.  I will say that I agree about the orchestration.  Marvelously scored, especially since the only other orchestral music by Henselt that I know of is the Meyerbeer Variations, Op. 11.