In this installment: famous concertos by Bartok, Shostakovich and Rachmaninoff, exotic music by Tcherepnin and Hovhaness, light Italianate music by Malipiero and Camilleri, Dutch masterpieces by Van Gilse and Pijper, a Croatian concerto by Papandopulo, and operetta-like piano fun by Eduard Künneke.
1. Jan van Gilse, Three Dance Sketches for Piano and Small Orchestra (1925-1926, The Netherlands)
Jan van Gilse (1881-1945) was born in Rotterdam, but went for his musical studies to the Conservatory of Cologne in Germany. He also studied with Engelbert Humperdinck in Berlin and from 1909 to 1911 in Italy. He worked as conductor in Bremen and Berlin, but returned to the Netherlands at the start of WWI. From 1917 to 1922 he conducted the Utrecht Municipal Orchestra, which he brought to a high professional level; for a number of years he was director of the Utrecht Musical Academy, but from 1937 on he dedicated himself solely to composition. Van Gilse was influenced by German late Romantic composers as Richard Strauss and Max Reger. From the 1920s on, his music becomes more modern. His masterpiece was the opera Thijl (1940), which has been called one of the best operas written by a Dutch composer.
This piano concerto from 1925-26 is almost chamber music. True to the title, Van Gilse has selected three dances which are played from afar, in a nostalgic way, as a sort of memory of a dance. The first movement was inspired by the minuet, the second by the Viennese waltz, and the final one by the tango. Although relatively light music, this is a very entertaining concerto - nothing dramatic, but composed in a nicely understated style.
[Performance listened to: Oliver Triendl with the Netherlands Symphony Orchestra conducted by David Porcelijn on CPO]
For more about classical music from the Netherlands, see my article at this blog "Classical Music in The Netherlands (3) - 20th century."
2. Willem Pijper, Piano Concerto (1927, The Netherlands)
Willem Pijper (1894-1947) has been called the most important and influential composer of his generation. Pijper studied briefly under Wagenaar at the Utrecht Conservatory, but was mostly self-taught. In the early 1920s, he grew into one of the most advanced composers in Europe, working with "cell technique" and polytonality and bitonality. As long-time teacher at the Conservatories of Amsterdam and Rotterdam he exerted a huge influence over several new generations of composers. Pijper's large and varied output includes operas, three symphonies, concertos for piano, violin and cello, and five string quartets as well as a number of chamber works. His music is always technically of superior quality.
Like all music by Pijper, the piano concerto is extremely concise (it is over before you realize it, after which the echoes keep bouncing in your head), but also very dramatic, with big contrasts. Like Van Gilse, Pijper was inspired by dance music - in his case jazz. All the same, his music never swings - he is keeping back all the time as if he is ashamed, perhaps because of his Calvinist roots are playing up. A very intelligent concerto.
[Performance listened to: Theo Bruins with Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Roelof van Driesten on Donemus Records]
3. Ildebrando Pizzetti, Canti della stagione alta (1930, Italy)
Ildebrando Pizzetti (1880 – 1968) was part of the "Generation of 1880"
along with Ottorino Respighi, Gian Francesco Malipiero, and Alfredo
Casella. They were among the first Italian composers in quite some decades whose
primary contributions were not in opera. The instrumental and a cappella
traditions had never died in Italian music and had produced, for
instance, the works of Respighi's teacher Giuseppe Martucci; but with the "Generation
of 1880" these traditions became stronger. However, compared to the other composers of his generation, Pizzetti was rather interested in opera, the theater and film music - he wrote for example music for the 1914 silent Italian film Cabiria.
Pizzetti wrote this piano concerto "Songs of the High Season" in 1930 in the Dolomites, early in his second marriage, one of the sunniest periods of his life. The music is immediately ‘open-air’, modal in flavor and with a rhapsodic feel - the long singing lines of the strings show a composer of a naturally lyrical bent. And there is a decided cinematic element here, too. Pizzetti's brass writing, for example, is quite impressive, especially in the last movement.
[Performance listened to: Susanna Stefani Caetani with the Robert-Schumann-Philharmonie conducted by Oleg Caetani on Naxos]
4. Natanael Berg, Piano Concerto in C sharp minor (1931, Sweden)
Berg trained in veterinary medicine and began learning music by teaching himself. He later studied at the Stockholm Conservatory. Until 1939, he served as a veterinarian in the Swedish Army and afterwards he became a freelance composer. His output included five operas, three ballets, five symphonies as well as several symphonic poems, a piano concerto, a violin concerto, a serenade for violin and orchestra, a piano quintet, songs, and pieces for piano.
The piano concerto is a free-flowing rhapsodic fantasy in a generalized European style. It begins with an imposing orchestral outpouring, with slightly discordant brass above tremolo strings. The piano enters and plays alone establishing the long, flowing melody. As the movement continues, the content alternates between calm meditation and urgent rhythms. The changes can be sudden and unexpected, giving the impression of a series of unrelated sections, strung together almost at random. The soloist is given plenty to do, in the heroic style of a romantic concerto.
[Performance listened to: Jacob Moscovicz with Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Stig Westerberg on Sterling]
5. Bela Bartok, Piano Concerto No 2 (1932, Hungary)
Bartok's piano concertos, and especially the second one, have always been among my favorites. The Second is a harshly brilliant, percussive concerto, at some points a fierce duel between piano and timpani. It is one of Bartok's most theatrically colorful orchestral scores, starting with a trumpet fanfare. As a contrast to the extroverted first movement comes the mysterious night music of the second movement, a chorale with muted strings. At the center of this sits a scherzo, which is even more mysterious. The moods and colors of Bartok's concerto evoke nature in a way that is completely new in Western music. A striking effect is also the building up of so-called "tone clusters." The concerto ends with a wildly syncopated rondo-finale.
While the first movement is played only by the piano, wind and percussion, the slow outer parts of the second movement are given to strings alone, and also contain a haunting dialogue between piano and timpani - magical combinations that foreshadow Bartok's Music for strings, percussion and celesta, as well as his Sonata for two pianos and percussion.
Listen to: Yuja Wang and the Berlin Philharmonic, director Simon Rattle on YouTube:
6. Dmitri Shostakovich, Concerto No. 1 for Piano, Trumpet and Strings in C minor Op 35 (1933, Soviet Union)
A concerto I hesitate to include because it is all too popular nowadays - something which was not the case when I started listening to it about 30 years ago. But it is such a fine work that I can't leave it out! The concerto was composed by Shostakovich in 1933 and performed the same year with the composer as soloist. Shostakovich was 27 years old and his compositions were performed and published not only in the Soviet Union, but also in America and Europe. At that time, his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk was produced in opera houses all over the world and enjoyed constant success. His reputation as one of the most outstanding composers of the 20th c. was already indisputable. Under these circumstances Shostakovich launched his first piano concerto with its astonishing wit and sparkling joy. The composer's humor not only determines the character of the first movement, but also the finale, which is a kaleidoscope of endless jokes. At times it sounds as if we hear street noises in which deliberately banal melodies appear, as if forming an integral part of the musical landscape in a large city. We also hear a fragment of a popular march, usually performed by a brass band, but now sounding deliberately silly - as if played in a circus.
Listen to Yuja Wang (piano) and Omar Tomasoni (trumpet) and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra conducted by Maris Jansons on YouTube:
7. Jean Françaix, Concertino pour piano et orchestre (1934, France)
A delightful French confection, written when Françaix was only twenty-two years old. This pithy and highly polished work, one of Francaix's earliest successes and still one of his best-known compositions, is an iconic example of the elegant and witty style that was to serve him well throughout a long composing career. The busy moto perpetuo manner of the first movement is propelled by a chattering piano figuration, and the slow movement is simplicity itself, both in melody and harmony, a serene page of music that repeats itself only to make way for the scherzo, spun out of a Gounod-like motif, and containing a tiny trio, suggesting a Musette. The return of the minuet leads without a break into the finale, a breezy Rondeau which also figures a louche and jazzy trumpet. Finally, the Concertino patters off in high good humor, vanishing on an upward glissando. A superb example of miniaturization and conciseness.
[Performance listened to: Philippe Cassard with the Ulster Orchestra conducted by Thierry Fischer on Hyperion]
8. Franz Schmidt, Concerto for Piano Left Hand and Orchestra in D Minor (1934, Austria)
The late-romantic composer Franz Schmidt (1874-1939) was born in Pressburg (now Bratislava, capital of Slovakia), then part of the Habsburg Empire. In Vienna, he studied composition with Robert Fuchs and cello with Ferdinand Hermesberger and he played the cello with the Vienna Court Opera Orchestra (often under Mahler's direction). He also gave concerts as a pianist and taught cello, piano, composition, and music theory at the Vienna Academy of Music. Franz Schmidt was one of the most influential personalities in Viennese musical life during the first three decades of the 20th century.
We can consider ourselves fortunate that Schmidt met the pianist Paul Wittgenstein, who had lost his right arm in the First World War and commissioned the most important composers of his time to write piano works for him for the left hand. Schmidt wrote two great works for one-handed piano and orchestra – the present Piano Concerto and the Beethoven Variations.
Franz Schmidt’s music has always been the object of strong advocacy by a small group of connoisseurs. His opera Notre-Dame (1904), the oratorio The Book of the Seven Seals (1937), the four symphonies and the various smaller orchestral works have always had a loyal following among highly discerning musicians. Schmidt earned within his own lifetime the reputation of an unjustly neglected master. As one can hear in the concerto, Schmidt's music is couched in a rather dark, late romanticism. Wittgenstein found his compositional soul mate in Franz Schmidt and for him Schmidt’s works became the blueprint of what left-hand pianism could and should be.
[Performance listened to: Karl-Andreas Kolly with Wiener Jeunesse Orchester cond. Herbert Bock on Pan Classics]
9. Sergei Rachmaninoff, Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini in A minor Op 43 (1934, U.S.),
Written for piano and symphony orchestra, the work bears great resemblance to a piano concerto. Rachmaninov composed the work at his villa in Switzerland and his Variations on a Theme by Corelli, which would be his last work for solo piano, was probably good "practice" for the larger, orchestral rhapsody. At the premiere, Rachmaninov, himself a noted interpreter of his compositions, was behind the grand piano at the Lyric Opera House in Baltimore on Nov. 7, 1934; he was accompanied by the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Leopold Stokowski.
After a brief introduction, the first variation is played, before the theme proper. Paganini had composed the work for violin, with the piano intended to play the salient notes "after" the first variation. Variations 2 through 6 connect various elements of the theme. The pauses and rhetorical "scaling" for the piano in variation 6 announces a change of tempo and tone. The piano seriously drones the Dies Irae lament of the medieval death mass, while the orchestra provides the accompaniment with a slower version of the opening motif of Paganini's theme. The lilting 18th variation (andante cantabile) is the best known. It is based on a reversal of Paganini's theme. In other words, Paganini's a minor theme is played "upside down," in Des major.
Listen to Anna Fedorova with the Philharmonie Südwestfalen, Gerard Oskamp [conductor] at YouTube:
10. Kurt Atterberg, Piano Concerto in B flat minor Op 37 (1935, Sweden)
A big-boned concerto in a late-romantic style. The beginning of the Concerto alludes to that of Grieg, before settling into a series of powerful and rhapsodic statements of quite sophisticated, albeit slightly melancholy, orchestral proportions. After that follows a lovely slow movement, soothing and flowing. The finale is marked "Furioso," and is robust and triumphant. The overall atmosphere is Nordic, but with some Slavic coloring.
Together with Ture Rangström, Atterberg was the leading composer of the second generation of Swedish late Romantic composers and thus, along with the latter, a continuation of the tradition established by Wilhelm Peterson-Berger, Wilhelm Stenhammar, and Hugo Alfvén. He was a proponent of the idea that Romantic music should strengthen national identity, while his opponents defined the character of modern music as supranational and cosmopolitan. While his five operas fell into oblivion, his nine symphonies and concertos are being heard more frequently again.
[Performance listened to: Dan Franklin Smith with Gavle Symphony Orchestra conducted by B. Tommy Andersson on Sterling]
11. Eduard Künneke, Piano Concerto No. 1 op. 36 (1935, Germany)
Eduard Künneke - a German pupil of Max Bruch - wrote operas, operettas, Broadway musicals and film music - his most popular work in his lifetime was the operetta Der Vetter aus Dingsda. The piano concerto is amply proportioned and lushly late-romantic. It is in three movements, the first of which is almost half the length of the whole work. It is a big movement capable of grandiloquence. This is followed by a peaceful Moderato. The finale plays out as an operetta-inflected and populist ragtime strut. This concerto is quite a discovery even if the manner can be rather familiar.
[Performance listened to: Oliver Triendl and Munich Radio Orchestra conducted by Ernst Theis on CPO]
12. Benjamin Britten, Piano Concerto, Op. 13 (1938, Britain)
Britten wrote the score of this expressive piano concerto in 1938 as a young man of twenty-four. A talented pianist, Britten premiered the work himself, at a Henry Wood Promenade concert at the Queens Hall, London, the same year. The score of the Piano Concerto follows a four movement form: toccata - waltz - impromptu - march. It is generally unsettling, suffused with tension and agitation. The concluding movement is a march which enables Britten to exploit various qualities of the piano, such as its broad range and percussive qualities.
Listen to Yu-Fen Lin, piano Lionel Friend, conductor Birmingham Conservatoire Symphony Orchestra:
13. Schoenberg, Piano Concerto Op 42 (1942, U.S.)
Arnold Schoenberg's Piano Concerto is one of his later works, written in America. It consists of four interconnected movements: Andante (very Viennese, containing a waltz), Molto allegro (full of anxious fragmentation and free Expressionist gestures), Adagio (very expressive, sombre and tragic, funeral march), and Giocoso (very ironic and varied in terms of character).
The piece features consistent use of the twelve-tone technique and only one tone row. The opening melody is thirty-nine bars long and presents all four modes of the tone row in the following order: basic set, inversion of retrograde, retrograde, and inversion.
Former Schoenberg student Lou Harrison said, "One of the major joys ... is in the structure of the phrases. You know when you are hearing a theme, a building or answering phrase, a development or a coda. There is no swerving from the form-building nature of these classical phrases. The pleasure to be had from listening to them is the same that one has from hearing the large forms of Mozart. ... This is a feeling too seldom communicated in contemporary music, in much of which the most obvious formal considerations are not evident at all. ... The nature of his knowledge in this respect, perhaps more than anything else, places him in the position of torch-bearer to tradition in the vital and developing sense".
Mari Kodama with SWR Symphonieorchester conducted by Kent Nagano:
14. Hovhaness, Lousadzak (The Coming of Light), Op 48 (1944, U.S.)
This is as exotic as it gets, the first work to reveal Hovhaness's mature style to a wider audience. In this "quasi-aleatoric Senza Misura" technique (often called "Spirit Murmur"), individual sections of the orchestra are instructed to continuously repeat a cycle of melody without temporal reference to other members of the ensemble. This results in a gorgeous sense of rhythmic mystery from which in "Lousadzak" the solo piano slowly emerges…
Through the subsequent half-century, Hovhaness has tended to refine rather than fundamentally change this basic musical approach - underlining the differences in his musical texture has been a clear and uniform "voice". Extensive travel throughout India and Asia casts an obvious shadow over much of his music from the fifties and sixties, coloring but not disguising the composer's distinctive palette. The basic characteristics of the "Hovhaness sound" are easier to recognize than define; but one of the most obvious "markers" is the strong mystic/religious "feel" to all his works. Another is Hovhaness's distinctly "vocal" style – even his orchestral work tends to sound as if it's being "sung"… an effect accentuated by Hovhaness's regular use of exposed solo lines over transparent string continuo (such as in "The Prayer of St Gregory" for trumpet and strings). Another characteristic is that Hovhaness is primarily a minaturist – longer movements often consist of clearly identifiable shorter sections.
Hovhaness's music uses consonant harmonies, organized modally or chromatically rather than tonally; and balances out the rhythmless sound of Senza Misura with an almost riotous love of counterpoint.
Maki Namikawa, piano, with Das Karussell-Ensemble for music from Vienna on YouTube:
15. Heitor Villa-Lobos, Piano Concerto no. 1 (1945, Brazil)
Villa-Lobos composed his First Piano Concerto in Rio de Janeiro in 1945. It was commissioned by the Canadian pianist Ellen Ballon, who gave the first performance in Rio de Janeiro with the composer conducting. Although Villa-Lobos adheres to a clear four-movement form, he makes little effort to follow traditional structures, based on melodic ideas, within the movements. Instead, he uses rhythmic elements to define sections of movements. All movements in fact fall into the structure invented and perfected in the Choros, a mosaic-like series of musical blocks, with each section containing material that is then developed, and finally discarded in favor of the next section. The musical invention appears limitless, as the composer often evolves sweeping, heroic themes from the tiniest of motives, or huge orchestral climaxes from insistent repetition of rhythmic fragments. But there are links and associations between the material of the various movements, and the massive cadenza with which the third movement of this concerto ends summarizes several of the concerto's important themes.
[Performance listed to: Cristina Ortiz with Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Miguel Gomez-Martinez on Decca]
16. Galina Ustvolskaya, Concerto for Piano, Strings and Timpani (1946, Soviet Union)
Galina Ustvolskaya was "the mystery woman of Soviet music." She studied with Shostakovich, but later expressed harsh comments on Shostakovich's personality and work, and disclaimed any influence. In fact, living in self-imposed isolation, she wrote only a few handfuls of highly personal works - twenty-one to be precise, including piano sonatas, pieces for various ensembles and five symphonies. The Concerto for Piano, Strings and Timpani was completed in 1946 when she was twenty-nine and still stood under the shadow of Shostakovich. But the work also points towards some later characteristics of Ustvolskaya's music, as her reliance on ostinati and repetitive phrases. The concerto is cast in one single movement which can be divided into three sections. The dramatic first section is characterized by a declamatory theme for strings reminiscent of Shostakovich; this is followed by a slow and rather bleak meditation; and the final section restates some of the earlier material and then is capped by an independent coda. This is deeply serious music of great emotional power.
Alexei Lubimov, piano, with Reinbert the Leeuw conducting an unnamed orchestra at YouTube:
17. Boris Papandopulo - Piano Concerto No. 2 (1947, Croatia)
Boris Papandopulo (1906–1991) was a Croatian composer and conductor of Greek and Russian Jewish descent. He was the son of Greek nobleman Konstantin Papandopulo and Croatian opera singer Maja Strozzi-Pečić and one of the most distinctive Croatian musicians of the 20th century. Papandopulo also worked as music writer, journalist, reviewer, pianist and piano accompanist; however, he achieved the peaks of his career in music as a composer. His composing oeuvre is imposing (counting ca 460 works): with great success he created instrumental (orchestral, concertante, chamber and solo), vocal and instrumental (for solo voice and choir), stage music and film music.
This is accessible and vibrant music, full of optimism and captivating resilience to the oppression he suffered throughout WWII. His Piano Concerto No. 2 forms the ideal introduction to this artistic cosmos. It has two short, speedy movements bookending an astonishing 16-minute lament. The beginning leaps and dances in a way that will appeal to any lover of Neo-classical music. Then, as quickly as it began, it’s over. That slow movement marks the introduction of a strong folk music element, transporting us to the hot, sun-baked Croatian hills. The piano does not enter for five entire minutes, waiting even for the violas to introduce a solo chant-theme. The soloist gets a cadenza, then collaborates with the orchestra on a song which builds to a big, conflicted climax. The structure is symmetrical, which means a piano is playing for only six minutes out of sixteen. Then the finale brings us back to a lighter, livelier atmosphere, and a joyful conclusion.
[Performance listened to: Oliver Triendl with I Solisti di Zagreb/Sreten Krstic on CPO]
18. Alexander Tcherepnin - Piano Concerto No 4 Op 78 "Fantaisie" (1947, U.S.)
After his return to Paris, Tcherepnin wrote a number of works in his own distinctive and accessible "Chinese" style, of which the Fourth Piano Concerto is exemplary. The work is a series of three tone poems in succession: "The Eastern Chamber Dream," "Yang Guifei's Love Sacrifice," and "Road to Yunnan." In fact, it is more an orchestral suite with piano than a real piano concerto, but the music is evocative and well-polished. The second movement even has something of a Hollywood film score from the same period!
See for the interesting story of Yang Guifei, the beloved concubine of the Emperor of the Tang dynasty, my article about the Chinese play "Rain on the Wutong Tree."
[Performance listened to: Noriko Ogawa with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra conducted by Lan Shui on BIS]
19. Ernest Bloch, Concerto Symphonique (1947/48, U.S.)
A very serious work, very much a symphony with a feisty solo piano. In this respect, it has a kinship with Brahms’ First Piano Concerto. Block worked for two years on this indomitable 40-min concerto. It is in fact one of the 20th century’s great undiscovered works for piano and orchestra, a grandiloquent composition of symphonic dimensions and Franckian cyclical form, wedded to a piano part such as we find in, say, Prokofiev’s Second Piano Concerto. The tunes are terrific and instantly memorable, and the replacement of the slow movement with an enormous scherzo virtually guarantees 40 minutes of non-stop excitement.
[Performance listened to: Halida Dinova with the Symphony Orchestra of the State Academic Cappella of St Petersburg, Conductor Alexander Tchernushenko]
20. Charles Camilleri: Piano Concerto No. 1 "Mediterranean" (1948, Malta)
Charles Camilleri (1931-2009) hailed from Malta and is the country-island's foremost composer. He came from a musically talented family. By the age of 15, he had finished a series of compositions, including the much-loved Malta Suite, which was inspired by Maltese folk song. When he was 18, Camilleri left for London, where he earned his living as an arranger of light music, performer,
composer and conductor. He dedicated his career to composition in the mid-1960s, and took up the post of Professor of Composition at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, Canada, and also lectured at Buffalo State University, where he met and became influenced by Elliott Carter, John Cage and Morton Feldman. Thus the works from this period onward are very different to those of earlier decades. He finally returned to Malta in 1983, continuing to compose until his death.
The lush First Piano Concerto, subtitled ‘Mediterranean’ because of the influences from southern Europe and north Africa, is from the first period of his career in which he claimed to be a “Maltese Bartok or de Falla” (his later concertos are in contrast dissonant and angular!). It is unashamedly Romantic but also a great pleasure to listen to. Camillieri uses folk motives in a Modernist / Neoromantic style that has Spanish, Arab and Italian traits. The slow movement begins with a haunting, unaccompanied solo for French horn.
[Performance listened to: Charlene Farrugia with Malta Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Miran Vaupotic on Naxos]
Best Piano Concertos from the Twentieth Century: Part One (1904-1932)
Best Piano Concertos from the Twentieth Century: Part Two (1926-1948)
Best Piano Concertos from the Twentieth Century: Part Three (1951-2018)
Classical Music Index