Each concerto recording in this collection originally appeared as the solo turn on a symphonic album conducted by Gerard Schwarz. Jerry and I both relished the chance to present piano-and-orchestra repertoire that was “right” for the symphonic program and in some cases under-served on recording. It was some time after all six had appeared in this context that I began to think of them as a collection of piano concertos seldom found on the piano-and-orchestra circuit that might deserve an album of their own.
Although not heard often on the modern piano, the keyboard concertos of Joseph Haydn are a staple of harpsichord and fortepiano repertoire. This is true especially of the wonderful D Major Concerto, which is also used frequently as a study piece for piano students. I admit to having played it with great enthusiasm when I was 10, but hasten to say that I wrote my cadenzas and lead-ins upon revisiting the concerto many years later! The G Major Concerto is rarely played on any instrument, but once discovered, usually inspires love at first hearing. Both concertos can arouse a momentary envy of those lucky residents of the Esterhazy Court, where Haydn spent so many years as Kapellmeister. Mozart said about his friend Haydn’s music that “he alone has the secret of making me smile and touching me to the bottom of my soul.” These two keyboard concertos, with their buoyant, sometimes humorous outer movements and their lovely, poignant slow movements, could not be better described. In my cadenzas for the slow movements, I took the liberty of restating each movement’s major thematic material in its entirety, with freely varied ornamentation, as it seemed to me that each theme could well stand another hearing before we left the movement.
Burleske by Richard Strauss and Nights in the Gardens of Spain by Manuel de Falla each represents its composer’s only work originally written for piano and orchestra (although Strauss did arrange for piano, left hand two of his other works, and Falla did write a chamber concerto for harpsichord and five other instruments that could be played on the piano). Burleske and Nights also have in common piano parts that are, to an unusual degree, an integral part of the orchestration of each concerto.
As an avid Strauss opera fan, I’ve had a wonderful time playing a piece that reminds me of some whimsical and lyrical moments in some of my favorite operas. Strauss wrote the delightful Burleske in 1885 when he was 21 and already revealing himself to be what musicologist Michael Kennedy called “the fantastic conjurer of the orchestra… juggling with pianist and orchestra as if they were featherweights.” Hans von Bülow, for whom the concerto was written, found it awkward to play and refused to perform it, so the premiere and the dedication on the score went to the pianist Eugene d’Albert.
For me, total immersion in Falla’s exotic and colorful Nights in the Gardens of Spain has proven to be a memorable adventure. These “symphonic impressions,” as Falla subtitled the work, stem from 1911-1915, and had their first performance at the Queen’s Hall in London in 1921, with the composer at the piano. Falla described how he evoked “certain effects peculiar to the popular instruments” of Andalusia in his imaginative orchestrations, and chose themes “based on the rhythms, modes, cadences and ornamental figures that distinguish the popular music of Andalusia, though they are rarely used in their original forms.”
As for the great American composer and educator Howard Hanson, I fell in love first with his choral music, then with his symphonic music, especially the first three symphonies, and only then discovered the Fantasy Variations on a Theme of Youth and the Piano Concerto. Despite his powerful position during his 40-year tenure at the Eastman School in Rochester, much of his music was looked upon as old-fashioned and out of step during his lifetime, and was therefore neglected. I enjoy rereading his famous credo on romanticism, bearing in mind that his music had to wait through both neo-classical and atonal trends to complete the cycle of acceptance for an unabashed romanticism such as his. “I recognize, of course, that romanticism is, at the present time, the poor stepchild, without the social standing of her elder sister, neo-classicism,” Hanson wrote. “Nevertheless, I embrace her all the more fervently, believing, as I do, that romanticism will find in this country rich soil for a new, young and vigorous youth.”
Hanson wrote the engaging Fantasy Variations in 1951, to collaborate the 100th anniversary of the founding of Northwestern University, where the composer had studied and taught over three decades earlier. “It occurred to me that it would be appropriate if I could write a series of variations on a theme which I wrote when I was a young student there,” Hanson explained. “Looking through my student works I found one theme which seemed to be as fresh today as it was when it was written well over 30 years ago. It was the opening theme of a concerto da camera for piano and string orchestra and I determined to use it as the basis for my new work.” The Fantasy’s premiere took place at Northwestern University on February 16, 1951, with the composer conducting.
If Hanson’s Fantasy Variations can be categorized as a rarity in concert performance, then his Piano Concerto, written in 1948, would qualify for the endangered species list. To me this piece is vintage Hanson – the sense of space; the sentimental, soaring melodies whose treatment brings to mind images like amber waves of grain or sea to shining sea; the rhythmic passages that begin with a sense of grounded energy and evolve into celebration – it’s all here. If I had any complaints at all it might be that in the gorgeous slow movement there are places where Hanson wanted ever more intense single, slow melody tones, arousing this pianist’s secret fantasy of applying vibrato to the piano keys and suddenly being able to produce a series of vibrating, miraculously swelling notes.
When Jerry Schwarz and I performed and recorded the Concerto we used an orchestral score still in manuscript, comparing the piano part in that score with the published two-piano study version. We were fascinated at the differences we found between the two versions of the piano part. Evidently Hanson had told Rudolf Firkusny, who had played the premiere, “Rudy, if you think something sounds better your way, play it that way!” I took my cue from this quote.
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