Cristofori's instrument spread at first quite slowly, probably because, being more elaborate and harder to build than a harpsichord, it was rather expensive. The first solo music specifically written for the instrument dates from 1732 but was still an isolated phenomenon as the fortepiano at that time remained something exotic. The fortepiano did not achieve full popularity until the 1760s, from which time date the first public performances; this was also the time that music described as being for the fortepiano was first widely published.
These square pianos formed the medium for which the first concertos for piano and string ensemble were written by composers as Johann Christian Bach and Carl Friedrich Abel in about 1770. The piano concerto was born!
Later, John Broadwood in England added improvements to the English action that Zumpe invented, increasing the elasticity of the strings, and also strengthening the frame. His English action (in around 1780) produced a touch with a lower sense of resistance and a more powerful sound. In that regard, this instrument can be termed the precursor to the modern piano. In his later years, Beethoven wrote many masterpieces on this piano made by Broadwood.
Development also continued in Vienna, where Johann Andreas Stein (1728-1792) developed what would later be called the Viennese action, which was responsible for a brighter tone and which responded well to the player's touch. Musicians such as Mozart, Haydn, Hummel, and the young Beethoven played these early Viennese instruments and helped increase the demand for them. These Stein pianos were light and playing them required exquisite sensitivity of touch rather than strength. Stein's business was carried on in Vienna by his daughter Nannette Streicher along with her husband Johann Andreas Streicher. The two were friends of Beethoven, and one of the composer's pianos was a Streicher. Later on in the early 19th century, more robust instruments with greater range were built in Vienna, by amongst others the Streicher firm and by Graf. Another important Viennese builder was Anton Walter, a friend of Mozart who built instruments with a somewhat more powerful sound than Stein's (Mozart owned an instrument by Walter). Composers and pianists in Vienna and beyond continued to use the Viennese piano through the middle of the 19th century, with such famous musicians as Schubert, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Schumann, Kalkbrenner, Liszt, and Brahms all playing or owning instruments of the Viennese style.
During the second half of the 19th c., the English action pianos, especially as perfected by American firms as Steinway, came to dominate the world market for pianos. Bösendorfer was the last major company to make pianos with the Viennese action, but switched to the more common English action in the early twentieth century.
To return to the piano concerto: after its birth in London in the hands of two German composers, during the Classical era the form quickly took hold across Europe, especially in Germany and Austria, becoming established with works by Mozart, and to a lesser degree Haydn, Stamitz, and Wölfl. In the early Romantic period the piano concerto repertoire was added to most notably by Beethoven, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Hummel, Ries, and Field.
Johann Christian Bach (1735-1782) left his town of birth, Leipzig, for Milan where he composed operas. In 1762 he moved to London, where he became the Queen's Music Master, and became known as "the London Bach." In 1764 Bach spent five months teaching composition to the visiting Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who was aged eight at the time and had been brought to London by his father. When Mozart began writing piano concertos in 1765, he adapted JC Bach's keyboard sonatas as his early concertos (K37-K41).
JC Bach's set of 6 keyboard concertos op 7 was published in London in 1770 and dedicated to the Queen. The fifth concerto, in three movements, is the finest of the set, featuring a deeply-felt slow movement in C minor. The first movement is in conventional classical form; the development begins with the soloist introducing new material, a procedure typical of Mozart but (as is obvious here) started by JC Bach! The cheerful last movement is superficially simple but contains various interesting compositional devices.
[Performance listened to: The World’s First Piano Concertos, with David Owen Norris, piano, and Sonnerie on Avie]
Piano Concerto No. 5 in D major, KV 175, is Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's de facto first piano concerto. He wrote the three-movement work at the age of seventeen in Salzburg. It is not an apprentice work, for the style is clearly Mozart and the ideas are attractive and skillfully organized. Mozart himself must have liked the concerto, for he kept it in his repertory for over a decade. Mozart probably composed the concerto for his own use and that of his sister at house or court concerts during Carnival and Lent. He took it on a tour to Munich in 1774, and to Mannheim and Paris in 1777-78. For a Lenten concert in Vienna Mozart composed a new rondo finale in 1785 (K 382), but that is usually played as a separate piece nowadays. Mozart replaced a sonata-form movement in the learned style with a piece in the galant style, but the new rondo finale has also been called a "series of insipid variations" - it is "cute" in the worst sense of that word. Around 1785-86 the concerto was finally published, signalling the end of its usefulness to Mozart as a performance piece.
Antonio Salieri (1750 – 1825) was an Italian composer from Legnago, south of Verona, in the Republic of Venice, who spent his adult life and career as a subject of the Habsburg monarchy in Vienna. Salieri was a pivotal figure in the development of late 18th-century opera. As a student of Florian Leopold Gassmann, and a protégé of Christoph Willibald Gluck, Salieri was a cosmopolitan composer who wrote operas in three languages. He helped to develop and shape many of the features of operatic compositional vocabulary, and his music exerted a powerful influence on contemporary composers. Salieri's small instrumental output includes two piano concerti, a concerto for organ written in 1773, a concerto for flute, oboe and orchestra (1774), and a triple concerto for oboe, violin and cello.
[Performance listened to: Andreas Staier and Concerto Koeln on Teldec]
(4) Carl Friedrich Abel: Keyboard Concerto in B flat Op 11 No 2, WK 54 (1774)
Abel (1723-1787) was a German composer and virtuoso viola da gamba player who was a pupil of J.S. Bach at the St. Thomas School in Leipzig. After playing in the Dresden court orchestra (1743–58), Abel went to London, where in 1764 he set up London's first orchestral conscription concerts in the Hanover Square Rooms together with Bach's son Johann Christian. These concerts featured the first public performances in England of Joseph Haydn’s symphonies. Abel and Bach also befriended the young Mozart when he visited London. The Op 11 concertos, dating from the early 1770s were published in Amsterdam and London and keep to the early classical two movement structure. It is graceful music which while making mild demands on the fingers, musically proceeds into new regions of expressiveness. This concerto was originally written for the resonant "square piano."
[Performance listened to: The World’s First Piano Concertos, with David Owen Norris, piano, and Sonnerie on Avie]
(5) Joseph Haydn: Keyboard Concerto No. 11 in D major, Hob. XVIII/11 (1779-83, pub. 1784)
Of the 14 pieces for keyboard and orchestra in the list of Haydn's works, only three can confidently be considered as
authentic, either by specific reference to the composer's own musical notebook or by the appearance of a
published score during the composer's lifetime, as is the case with the present concerto. When it was published in 1784 the title page proudly proclaimed it to be "the only piano concerto of Haydn which
so far has appeared in print." It was written when Haydn was already a European celebrity and was working on his string quartets op 33.
The concerto was originally composed for either harpsichord or fortepiano, but the slow second movement only works well on a fortepiano. The work opens with a bright Vivace in the strings, quickly joined by the winds, and later by the piano's cheerful contributions. The second movement Adagio is an elaborate melancholy aria for keyboard with the strings. The rousing final movement, headed Rondo all' Ungarese (although the folk-tune apparently is Croatian rather than Hungarian) sealed the concerto’s popularity in Haydn’s lifetime.
[Performance listened to: Marc-Andre Hamelin and Les Violons du Roy directed by Bernard Labadie]
(6) Ludwig van Beethoven: Piano Concerto in E-flat major, WoO 4 (1784, completed by Hess)
Ludwig van Beethoven's "lost" E flat major Piano concerto was written in 1784 when the composer was a mere fourteen years of age. Beethoven later disowned the piece, and the original orchestral parts were lost over time. When the work was rediscovered around 1890 only the solo piano part had survived intact. The reconstruction of the concerto came at the hand of musicologist Willy Hess, who drew on cues in the extant piano part to fashion the orchestration. While It is difficult to regard the E flat concerto as an authentic piano concerto by Beethoven, the parentage of the solo piano manuscript is undisputed.
[Performance listened to: Sophie Mayuko Vetter and the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra, Peter Ruzicka]
This very early Beethoven at Youtube played by Philippe Boaron and the Camerata du Léman:
(7) Johann Franz Xaver Sterkel: Piano Concerto No 2 in D major Op 26.1 (1785 or earlier)
Johann Franz Xaver Sterkel (1750 – 1817) was educated at the University of Würzburg and in 1778 he became chaplain and musician at the court in Mainz. He lived in Regensburg (from 1802 to 1810), then in Aschaffenburg, and finally retired to Würzburg in 1815. He had various posts as music director and Kapellmeister. He wrote mostly instrumental music, including symphonies (24) and concertos (6 for piano), chamber works with keyboard solo, piano sonatas and piano duets. In his piano concertos, Sterkel places the main importance on the musical action of the solo instrument, instead of opting for a dialogue between piano and orchestra.
[Performance listened to: Kai Adomeit and the Bohuslav-Martinu Philharmonic Zlin directed by Peter Luecker on Bayer Records]
(8) Leopold Kozeluch: Keyboard Concerto in F major, Op 12 No 1 (1784 or 1785)
Kozeluch (1747-1818) was one of many 18th c. Czech musicians who moved to Vienna to staff the musical households of the Hapsburg empire. In 1771 he made his debut with a ballet at the National Theater in Prague. In 1778 he left for Vienna and probably became a pupil of Johann Georg Albrechtsberger for a short time. Soon Kozeluch became a celebrated pianist. As successor to Georg Christoph Wagenseil, he became the teacher of Archduchess Maria Elisabeth, daughter of Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, at the imperial court.
After the death of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, he became chamber chapel master and court composer to Franz I of Austria in 1792. Even in his lifetime he was appreciated throughout Europe. His symphonies were performed several times by Joseph Haydn in London. As a composer he wrote around 400 works, including around 30 symphonies, 22 concertos for piano, 2 concertos for clarinet, 24 sonatas for piano and violin, 63 trios with piano, 2 oratorios, nine cantatas and various church music.
The piano concerto in F starts with an insistent melody that may keep humming around in your head. This is followed by a songful Adagio. The 6/8 tune of the final rondo turns into a dance.
[Performance listened to: Howard Shelley and the London Mozart Players on Hyperion]
(9) Carl Philip Stamitz: Keyboard Concerto in F major (1790)
Carl Philip Stamitz (1745-1801) was the most prominent representative of the second generation of the Mannheim School. His father was Konzertmeister of the court orchestra in Mannheim, and brought the Mannheim orchestra to an impressive peak of perfection. Carl studied with his father and with other members of the court orchestra, including Christian Cannabich, Ignaz Holzbauer, and Franz Xaver Richter. In 1770 he moved to Paris, where he was appointed court composer and regularly performed in the Concert spirituel. In 1780 Carl moved to The Hague where, between 1782 and 1784, he appeared, primarily as a violist, at twenty-eight concerts given at the court of William V, Prince of Orange. Between 1788 and 1790 he performed in a large number of German cities, before spending his last years in Jena, as Kapellmeister and teacher at the University.
Carl Stamitz's compositions include more than fifty symphonies, nearly forty symphonies concertantes (most of them with two solo instruments), some forty solo concertos, and a huge body of chamber music for strings and for winds, both separately and in combination. The piano concerto of Stamitz is based on a relatively conventional template, but has been invested with a new depth of expression designed to produce a new range of affections in the listener. This is the 'sentimental' style of composition that opened the door to Empfindsamkeit and to the Sturm and Drang movement most notably embodied by the mid-period symphonies of Haydn.
[Performance listened to: Elena Pinciaroli, piano, Rami Musicali Orchestra, Filippo Conti, conductor on Brilliant]
(10) Muzio Clementi: Piano Concerto in C major (1796)
The Italian-born pianist and composer Muzio Clementi (1752-1832) from a young age had his base in London, although he made several concert tours on the continent as well. On one such occasion, in 1781, he engaged in a piano competition with Mozart. Influenced by the stile galante of Johann Christian Bach, Clementi developed a fluent legato style, which he passed on to a generation of pianists, including John Field, Johann Baptist Cramer, Ignaz Moscheles, Friedrich Kalkbrenner, Carl Czerny and others. Clementi also produced and promoted his own brand of pianos and was a notable music publisher.
Only one piano concerto by Clementi has come down to us. The first movement looks back to Mozart's early Salzburg concertos such as the concerto No 9 K271. The opening tutti presents all the first movement's main material - in contrast to Mozart's custom, the piano introduces no new melodies of its own. The second movement is a hushed Adagio with rapturous embellishments by the piano. The presto rondo finale is in the style of a contredanse, and provides a merry and playful conclusion.
[Performance listened to: Howard Shelley (piano and conductor) with the Sinfonieorchester St. Gallen on Hyperion]
(11) John Baptist Cramer: Piano Concerto No. 2 in D minor Op. 16 (1797)
John Baptist Cramer (1771-1758) was brought from Mannheim to London as a child by his violinist father, and as a
virtuoso pianist, composer and music publisher, became one of the leading
figures in British music. Cramer studied with Clementi, something which though brief was decisive in forming his artistic temperament. He made two long concert tours through the continent and in 1799 met Beethoven in Vienna. Besides being one of the finest pianists of his day, Cramer was a hugely prolific composer of 124 sonatas (of which 60 solo sonatas for the piano), as well as many pedagogic works.
Cramer wrote in all nine piano concertos, published over the thirty-year period 1795 to 1825. The second concerto is contemporaneous with Beethoven's first two. Like those, Cramer stays quite close to the format established by Mozart (his last two concertos would be more experimental). But also Cramer's early concertos contain very fine music.
[Performance listened to: Howard Shelley and the London Mozart Players]
(12) Daniel Steibelt: Piano Concerto No 3 in E major "L'orage", op.33 (1798)
Daniel Gottlieb Steibelt (1765-1823) was a German pianist and composer, who was mainly active in Paris, London and St Petersburg. As a fashionable virtuoso he scored great successes in these cities. But Steibelt seems to have been "vain, arrogant, and extravagant" - and he had to change his address frequently to keep ahead of his creditors. There also exists a famous anecdote how he was humiliated in a contest with Beethoven when he visited Vienna in 1800. But those things shouldn't obscure the fact that Steibelt was an imaginative composer - he wrote 8 piano concertos of which the last from 1820 even contains a chorus. In general, he focused his skill on pictorial effects, such as a storm, a hunt, a trip in the mountains and military music. These appear in his finales (his strongest movements) and are great fun. In contrast, the slow movements are short and relatively weak. In 1798 he produced his concerto No. 3 in E
flat while working in London, where he had moved two years earlier. It became a work that instantly ensured his
popularity. The most impressive movement is the final rondo pastorale, in which the famous storm occurs: after a quiet section (a sort of slow peasant dance), the composer introduces an effective,
if somewhat naïve, imitation of a storm. The concerto was played in concert halls all over Europe. It is indeed a very enjoyable concerto, full of good tunes and keyboard gymnastics.
[Performance listened to: Ulster Orchestra/Howard Shelley (piano/conductor) on Hyperion]
(13) Johann Ladislav Dussek: Piano Concerto No 10 in G minor, Op 49/50, (1801)
Johann
Ladislav Dussek (1760-1812) was one of the first piano virtuosos to
travel widely throughout Europe. He performed at courts and concert
venues from London to St Petersburg to Milan, and was celebrated for
his technical prowess. During a nearly ten-year stay in London, he was
instrumental in extending the size of the pianoforte, and was the
recipient of one of John Broadwood's first 6-octave pianos. He also was the first pianist to sit at the piano
with his profile to the audience, earning him the appellation "le beau
visage." All subsequent pianists have sat on stage in this manner. He
was one of the best-regarded pianists in Europe before Beethoven's rise
to prominence.
Numbering Dussek’s approximately eighteen piano concertos is a bit of a challenge. They span nearly a third of a century, with the earliest stemming from 1779 (when Dussek was nineteen), the last from about 1810, two years before his death at the age of fifty-two. His first and last attempts are lost, and at least three of the surviving concertos specify either pianoforte or harp. I have here selected the Piano Concerto in G Minor, Op. 49/50, the 10th piano concerto and Dussek's only concerto in a minor key. Although virtually unknown today, is considered one of the most important contributions to the genre in the transition from musical classicism to romanticism. Dussek probably began composing the concerto around 1799, when he left London, and completed it in Germany no later than 1801. In 1801, the work was published for the first time in Paris by Érard, in 1803 for the first time in London by Clementi & Co as op. 49, and shortly thereafter, in revised form, in Leipzig by Breitkopf & Härtel as op. 50.
[Performance listened to: Andreas Staier, Hammerfluegel, and the Concerto Koeln on Capriccio]
(14) Carolus Antonius Fodor: Keyboard Concerto in G minor, op 12 (1802)
Venlo-born Anton Fodor (1768-1846) was a pianist, conductor and
composer, the best Dutch musician of his generation at a time that
foreign musicians were dominant in the Netherlands. In 1801 he was named
conductor of the orchestra of Felix Meritis in Amsterdam, a position he
occupied for 25 years. Fodor's classical manner is close to that of
Joseph Haydn. He wrote 8 piano concertos. The present one stems from
1802 and is especially attractive because of the sparkling "alla turque"
rondo finale.
[Performance listened to: Arthur Schoonderwoerd with Christofori on Alpha]
(15) Joseph Woelfl: Piano Concerto No. 1 in G major, Op. 20 (1802-03)
Joseph
Johann Baptist Woelfl (also written in the German form Wölfl,
1773-1812) was born in Salzburg, where he studied music under Leopold
Mozart and Michael Haydn. He first appeared in public as a soloist on
the violin at the age of seven. Moving to Vienna in 1790 he visited
Mozart and may have taken lessons from him. Although he
dedicated his 1798 sonatas op. 6 to Beethoven, the two were rivals.
Beethoven however bested Woelfl in a piano 'duel' at the house of Count
Wetzlar in 1799, after which Woelfl's local popularity waned. After
spending the years 1801 -1805 in Paris, Woelfl moved to London, where
his first concert performance was on 27 May 1805.
Woelfl wrote six piano concertos, five symphonies, numerous
string quartets and 68 sonatas for the piano, several for piano and
violin, 18 piano trios, and seven operas. The first piano concerto is
amiable stuff: poetic and suffused with charm and calm. Although but a
slight side-step distant from Mozart, this and his other music is very
fresh and engaging.
[Performance listened to: Yorck Kronenberg (piano) and the SWR Rundfunkorchester Kaiserslauten/Johannes Moesius]
(16) Anton Eberl: Piano Concerto in C major, Op. 36 (1803)
Anton
Eberl (1765-1807) was born in Vienna as the son of an official at the
imperial court. He was a musical prodigy, who performed as a pianist as
early as age seven. At his father's insistence, he began
studying law in the late 1770s, but he soon switched to focus entirely on music. He studied with Mozart and became friends with him. Eberl's
compositions were of such a high standard that some were published
under Mozart's name. Eberl openly protested against this misuse of his
work. Upon Mozart's death, he composed
the cantata "At Mozart's Grave." After Mozart's death, contact with his
family was not broken: he accompanied Mozart's widow Constanze and her
sister Aloysia Lange on a concert tour to Hamburg and Leipzig in the
winter of 1795-1796.
On March 28, 1796, Eberl married Anna Maria
Scheffler, and in the same year he left for St. Petersburg, where he was
appointed Kapellmeister, composer, pianist, and music teacher at the court of Tsar Paul I.
Eberl devoted himself to
composing instrumental music and became immensely popular with it. His
Symphony in E-flat premiered on April 7, 1805 at the same time as
Beethoven's Third Symphony (Eroica), with Eberl receiving the best
reviews. Unfortunately, Eberl was a genius who died young of
blood-poisoning.
The present piano concerto was premiered by
Eberl himself in 1803. The closeness to Mozart is unmistakable. In all,
Eberl wrote four piano concertos and five symphonies, and further a
large amount of piano music.
[Performance listened to: James McChesney with the Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Karl Kemper]
(17) Ferdinand Ries: Piano Concerto No. 4 in C minor, Op. 115 (1809)
Ferdinand Ries (1784-1838) was Beethoven's favorite pupil and scretary and has long stood in the shadow of the master. He composed eight symphonies, a violin concerto, nine piano concertos, three operas, and numerous other works, including 26 string quartets. In 1838 he published a collection of reminiscences of his teacher Beethoven, co-written with Franz Wegeler. He wrote in a style which lies between the Classical and early Romantic styles. His concert trips took Ries through the whole of Europe, with an extended stay of eleven years in London from 1813. After his return to Germany, he lived and worked mainly in Frankfurt am Main.
Ries completed the present concerto around 1809, before embarking on his European tours. This would make the concerto the second of the composers eight piano concertos. It is likely that he performed the work regularly during the next few years. As with other concertos by Ries, this concerto was only published much later, at a time Ries didn't need it anymore as part of his performing repertoire (which he kept out of the hands of other performers). If its orchestral fabric nods in Beethoven’s direction, particularly in the first movement, the piano writing is that of the younger generation, of artists such as Johann Nepomuk Hummel whom he must have met on many occasions in Vienna. This is evident in the Molto adagio second movement and in the unorthodox C major Allegretto finale which is interrupted by an Adagio leading to a brisk Allegro conclusion filled with dazzling bravura writing.
[Performance listened to: Christopher Hinterhuber, piano, with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra conducted by Uwe Grodd on Naxos]
(18) John Field: Piano Concerto in A-flat major, H. 31 (1811)
John Field (1782–1837) was born at Dublin in 1782. He came of a musical family, his father being a violinist. When a few years later the family settled in London, Field became the favorite pupil of the celebrated Clementi, whom he accompanied to Paris, and later, in 1802, on his great concert tour through France, Germany and Russia. Under the auspices of his master Field appeared in public in most of the great European capitals, especially in St Petersburg, and in that city he remained when Clementi returned to England. In 1831 he came to England for a short time, and for the next four years led a migratory life in France, Germany and Italy, exciting the admiration of music lovers wherever he appeared in public.
Field became well-known for his piano style of a chromatically decorated melody over sonorous left hand parts supported by sensitive pedalling. Representative of these traits are Field's 18 nocturnes, which were some of the most influential music of the early Romantic period, and much loved by Chopin and Liszt. Similarly influential were Field's early piano concertos, which occupy a central place in the development of the genre in the 19th century. Already the earliest of these works show competent and imaginative orchestration, and bold, original piano writing. Composers such as Hummel, Kalkbrenner and Moscheles were influenced by these works, which are particularly notable for their nocturne-like central movements.
Field wrote his second piano concerto using the lyric, subdued, slightly melancholy style typical of the late Mozart, rather than the joyous "happy-go-lucky mood" of Haydn or the bombastic display of Beethoven. It is imbued with lyric themes and even instrumental embellishments which are reminiscent of those from the composer's native Ireland. In three different sections of the first movement, a lyric section with harp-like movements in the left hand is followed by a driving, audibly Irish-style reel. The influence of his mentor Muzio Clementi was also important especially in the more Romantic features of the work. It has consistently been the most popular of Field's seven concertos.
[Performance listened to: Paolo Restani with Orchestre Philharmonique de Nice directed by Mareo Guidarini (Brilliant Classics)]
(19) Johann Nepomuk Hummel: Piano Concerto in C, Op. 34 (ca. 1812)
Hummel (1778-1837) has already often been mentioned in these pages about classical music, as the unjustly forgotten pianist and composer who, being an important pupil of Mozart, carried Mozart's heritage into the 19th century. Hummel also studied with Haydn, Albrechtsberger and Salieri. Haydn recommended Hummel as his successor as Kapellmeister in Eisenstadt. After marrying a well-known singer - who was also admired by Beethoven (for more than musical reasons) - he in 1819 became grand-ducal Kapellmeister in Weimar. During his life, Hummel was showered with honors. There are about eighteen works for solo piano and orchestra in Hummel’s output, of which eight are concertos. However, No 1 Op 73 which was published in 1816 is in fact an arrangement of the Mandolin Concerto of 1799. If we disqualify that adaptation, the present work (Op.34/34a/36 in C) dating from 1809 - dedicated to Archduke Rudolph and published ca. 1812 - becomes the first mature piano concerto by Hummel. It received its first performance during the celebrations for the Archduke’s marriage. The work could be called Hummel’s "Military" concerto, not because it is in any way militaristic, but because the Napoleonic wars of the period seem to be echoed in its occasional use of soft timpani and muted trumpets, as Derek Carew, who wrote the booklet for the Chandos recording, so aptly formulates. These military tones are combined with typical Viennese lyricism. The ensuing Adagio is built on a chorale-like melody. The military spirit returns in the finale, but in a satirizing vein - the soldiers have been turned into toy soldiers.
[Performance listened to: Howard Shelley and the London Mozart Players on Chandos]
(20) Franciszek Lessel: Piano Concerto in C major, Op 14 (1813)
Franciszek Lessel (1780 – 1838) was born in Warsaw. His father was a pianist and composer of Czech origin who served as his first teacher. In 1799 Franciszek Lessel went to study with Joseph Haydn and continued to do so until Haydn's death ten years later. Lessel then returned to Poland, where he worked as a court musician, headed Warsaw's Amateur Music Society, and gave lessons on how to play the glass harmonica. In later life he largely had non-musical administrative and inspector jobs, but he always continued composing. His output includes - besides the present piano concerto - five symphonies, concertos for horn, flute and clarinet, string quartets and other chamber music, piano sonatas and church music.
Lessel's sole piano concerto is a brilliant work, with a particularly beautiful melody in the first Allegro movement. It sparkles in the piano and orchestral parts, but all the same both subjects of the exposition are in a lyrical vein. The Adagio is in an unpretentious song-like manner. The Rondo Allegretto is in a mazurka rhythm and here pianistic virtuosity reach new heights.
[Performance listened to: Howard Shelley with Sinfonia Varsovia on Fryderyk Chopin Society]
(21) Franz Xaver Mozart: Piano Concerto No 2 in E-flat major (1818)
Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart (1791 – 1844), also known as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Jr., was the youngest child of six born to Mozart and his wife Constanze. He was a composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher of the late classical period whose early Romantic style was heavily influenced by his father's late works.
Franz Xaver grew up in Prague under the care of Franz Xaver Niemetschek. Starting in 1798, the year Niemetschek published the first Mozart biography authorized by Constanze, Wolfgang junior took music lessons from Georg Vogler, Antonio Salieri, and Johann Nepomuk Hummel. He also began composing musical works at an early age. His opus 1 was published in Vienna in 1802, a piano quartet in g minor. Franz Xaver was eleven years old at the time. He gained some fame as a pianist fairly quickly, but remained in his father's shadow throughout his life, a situation of which he was painfully aware. He became a music teacher and chapel master in Lemberg (Lviv) and encouraged Ludwig von Köchel to compile a catalog of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's oeuvre. In 1838 Franz Xaver settled in Vienna. He was appointed honorary Kapellmeister of the Mozarteum, which opened its doors in Salzburg in October 1841. Franz Xaver Mozart's oeuvre consists mainly of chamber music, songs and a number of piano concertos. The second concerto in particular shows signs of breaking out into the romantic era. It is unfair that this music has lain for so long under the shadow of his brilliant father.
[Performance listened to: Howard Shelley piano/conductor and the Sinfonieorchester St Gallen on Hyperion]