Hyperion RPC #80 - Dupont PC #3 and Benoit Symphonic Poem

[Gareth Vaughan]

Who published the work, or is it unpublished and only in MS? If published there is a chance the publisher will have the piano part in their archives (if they can be bothered to look!) even if no full score was printed.

[4candles]

The only information I currently have is that this work (the Concerto in E minor) is in manuscript, and was not published. If it was ever passed under the nose of a publisher, I'd say Schott in Brussels would have been a very likely contender. Their archive is partially online, but is going through a complete review and so their full archive won't be online/available for at least another few months.

[promusician]

Very unfortunate, I think the parts are from copyist handwriting, for a performance. There must be a full score originally from Dupont but we need more investigation on where it may be. There is no opus number so very unlikely it was ever published, but there is a chance Dupont sent it to Schott

[promusician]

How very frustrating! Perhaps the missing boxes (007, and 005 or 010? - presumably piano and full score) were used for the last performance of the work, if that could be established.

Were they able to help regarding the two 'Fantaisies', Op.13 and 79?

Their reply:
The two fantaisies are sketches as archival pieces : they are not completed and ready to use for a performance.

Unfortunately..

[Gareth Vaughan]

There need not necessarily be a full score. Often only the piano part with cues, or a 2-piano score were produced, plus a set of orchestral parts of course. This is true of Dreyschock's PC and some of those by Herz and Moscheles - others too.

[eschiss1]

Not what they said, though. Difference between Spohr sym 1 which for the longest time was published only as parts, and a work they can only find in sketch...

[promusician]

There need not necessarily be a full score. Often only the piano part with cues, or a 2-piano score were produced, plus a set of orchestral parts of course. This is true of Dreyschock's PC and some of those by Herz and Moscheles - others too.

The problem is we are missing the most crucial element (piano part), no where we can reconstruct the piece with only orchestral parts. The other two fantasies are survived in sketches (esquisse). So we are left with three concertante works: Concerto in F minor Op.49, premier allegro du concerto op.11 (piano solo with cues) and concertstuck op.42

Very unfortunate!

[4candles]

I've gone down a bit of a rabbit-hole and, interestingly, I've just come across a contemporary French review mentioning the performance of a "Ballade and Minuetto Scherzo from his concerto in E minor...". It appears that these pieces were the ones Berlioz praised - his review is noted in an article from 1873 here.

The leading question now, for me, is whether the music of the published Concertstück, Op.42, which has these movement headings, bears any resemblance to that of the manuscript Concerto in E minor. Another later review mentions a performance of the Concerto in E minor by Dupont in Louvain, 1875, but no movement titles are given. A performance by Dupont in 1862 gives the first movement as 'Allegro', but no final movement title is given.

Finally, at least one other concerto is mentioned in earlier reviews from 1862-63; in the latter year, the key of D minor is attributed. So Fétis may have been correct after all!

More questions than answers then, but perhaps we are getting closer!?

[promusician]

Excellent research! If these are the two middle movements of the concerto symphonique, then we are left with first movement and final movement. We do not know without looking at the surviving manuscript parts of concerto en mi mineur. I have a 2 piano reduction of the concertstuck, will look through.

[4candles]

I have checked with the Schott Archive and they appear to hold the materials for the Concertstück, Op.42 and the already-recorded concerto, op.49, but they have no other concertante works.

[promusician]

Out of curiosity, I asked further for the two incomplete fantaisie sketches.
"The sketches of the op. 13 contains 30 pages without a music end and only the piano part. The sketches of the op. 79 contains only 4 pages with an end but only the piano part too."