Frédéric Chopin's ''Allegro de concert'', Op. 46, is a piece for
piano
The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keybo ...
, published in November 1841. It is in one movement and takes between 11 and 15 minutes to play. The principal themes are bold and expressive. It has a curious place in the Chopin canon, and while its history is obscure, the evidence supports the view, shared by
Robert Schumann and others, that it started out as the first movement of a projected third piano concerto, of which the orchestral parts are either now non-existent or were never scored at all. There is no evidence that Chopin ever even started work on the latter movements of this concerto.
History
Chopin published his two piano concertos in 1830. That same year he wrote that he was planning a concerto for two pianos and orchestra, and would play it with his friend
Tomasz Napoleon Nidecki if he managed to finish it. He worked on it for some months but he had the greatest difficulty with it, and this work never eventuated; however, he may have used ideas from it in later works.
There is also evidence that Chopin started work on a third concerto for piano and orchestra. In ''Chopin: The Piano Concertos'', Rink quotes from an unpublished Chopin letter, dated 10 September 1841, offering Breitkopf & Härtel an "Allegro maestoso (du 3e Concerto) pour piano seul" for 1,000 francs.
In November 1841, Schlesinger published the ''Allegro de concert'', which has a tempo indication of "Allegro maestoso", and Breitkopf & Härtel also published it in December of the same year. The work has the general characteristics of the opening movement of a concerto from around that time. It contains a lengthy introduction, with the section corresponding to the original piano solo commencing at bar 87. It seems clear that the "Allegro maestoso" Chopin referred to in his letter was the piece published two months later as ''Allegro de concert'', Op. 46.
The first few notes of the piece were drafted around 1832, but it is not known when the rest of the piece was written. Chopin dedicated it to
Friederike Müller (1816–1895), one of his favourite pupils, who studied with him for 18 months (1839–1841).
Franz Liszt gave her the nickname "Mademoiselle opus quarante-six" ("forty six", the work's opus number, in French).
Reception
The ''Allegro de concert'' includes certain devices which reflect a more virtuosic technique than that required by most of his other works.
[John Rink: ''Chopin, the Piano Concertos''](_blank)
/ref> Technical difficulties include dense musical textures, complex and light finger work, massive leaps of left hand chords, trills and scales in double notes and difficult octaves. For this reason it is considered one of Chopin's most difficult pieces, but regardless of this challenge, some pianists and critics find it unconvincing. It has received relatively little attention in the concert hall or in recordings, and it is not particularly well known to music lovers. Those who have recorded it include Claudio Arrau
Claudio Arrau León (; February 6, 1903June 9, 1991) was a Chilean pianist known for his interpretations of a vast repertoire spanning the baroque to 20th-century composers, especially Bach, Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Schumann, Liszt and B ...
, Nikolai Demidenko
Nikolai Demidenko (born 1 July 1955, Anisimovo) is a Russian-born classical pianist.
Biography
Demidenko studied at the Gnessin State Musical College with Anna Kantor and at the Moscow Conservatoire under Dmitri Bashkirov. He was a finalist ...
, Garrick Ohlsson
Garrick Olof Ohlsson (born April 3, 1948) is an American classical pianist. He is the only American to have won first prize in the International Chopin Piano Competition, at the VIII competition in 1970. He also won first prize at the Busoni Com ...
, Nikita Magaloff
Nikita Magaloff (russian: Никита Магалов; 26 December 1992) was a Georgian-Russian pianist.
He was born in Saint Petersburg to a Georgian noble family named Maghalashvili. Magaloff and his family left Russia in 1918 for Finland. H ...
, Vladimir Ashkenazy
Vladimir Davidovich Ashkenazy (russian: Влади́мир Дави́дович Ашкена́зи, ''Vladimir Davidovich Ashkenazi''; born 6 July 1937) is an internationally recognized solo pianist, chamber music performer, and conductor. He ...
and Roger Woodward
Roger Woodward (born 20 December 1942) is an Australian classical pianist, composer, conductor and teacher.
Life and career Early life
The youngest of four children, Roger Woodward was born in Sydney where he received first piano lessons ...
. However, Chopin himself seems to have been very proud of it. He told Aleksander Hoffmann: "This is the very first piece I shall play in my first concert upon returning home to a free Warsaw". Chopin never returned to Warsaw, and it is perhaps for this reason that there is no record of him ever playing it in public. In fact, there seems to be no record of its first public performance at all. ( Claude Debussy played it at the Paris Conservatoire in July 1879.Concerts where Debussy appeared as a pianist
/ref>) The work received one of its rare public performances at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in the early 1980s as the opening work for a 'quasi orchestral' solo piano recital by British pianist Mark Latimer that ended with only the second London performance of the equally demanding '' Concerto for Solo Piano'' by Charles-Valentin Alkan.
Transcriptions
Some attempts have been made to score the ''Allegro de concert'' for piano and orchestra as probably originally intended by Chopin. Jean Louis Nicodé produced two versions—one for two pianos, and a later one for piano and orchestra—but he added various parts of his own creation, amounting to 70 bars of new music (a development section after bar 205, a third tutti, etc.). He also "beefs up" the piano part towards the end. This version was first played by the Dutch pianist Marie Geselschap in New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...
, with an orchestra conducted by Anton Seidl
Anton Seidl (7 May 185028 March 1898) was a famous Hungarian Wagner conductor, best known for his association with the Metropolitan Opera in New York City and the New York Philharmonic.
Biography
He was born in Pest, Austria-Hungary, where ...
.
In the early 1930s, Kazimierz Wiłkomirski
Kazimierz Wiłkomirski; (September 1, 1900, Moscow - March 7, 1995, Warsaw) was a Polish cellist, composer and conductor. Son of Alfred Wiłkomirski, brother of Maria Wiłkomirska, Wanda Wiłkomirska and violinist Michael Wilkomirski.
Graduate of ...
made another orchestration that was faithful to Chopin's published score. The world premiere recording of this version was by Michael Ponti with the Berlin Symphony Orchestra under Volker Schmidt-Gertenbach.
The Australian pianist Alan Kogosowski went further. In addition to restructuring and augmenting Chopin's music for the ''Allegro de concert'' into a new treatment for piano and orchestra, he also created settings for piano and orchestra of the Nocturne in C-sharp minor, Op. posth. ''"Lento con gran espressione"'', and the ''Bolero'' in C major-A minor, Op. 19. Kogosowski put these together as a three-movement work and performed it under the misleading title of "Chopin's ''Piano Concerto No. 3 in A major''" on 8 October 1999, with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra under Neeme Järvi
Neeme Järvi (; born 7 June 1937) is an Estonian American conductor.
Early life
Järvi was born in Tallinn. He initially studied music there, and later in Leningrad at the Leningrad Conservatory under Yevgeny Mravinsky, and Nikolai Rabinovich, ...
.
Austrian pianist Ingolf Wunder
Ingolf Wunder (born 8 September 1985 in Klagenfurt) is an Austrian classical pianist. In 2010, Wunder was the second prize winner at the XVI International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw, Poland. He also won special prizes for best concerto, be ...
orchestrated and recorded it with the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra
The Warsaw National Philharmonic Orchestra ( pl, Orkiestra Filharmonii Narodowej w Warszawie) is a Polish orchestra based in Warsaw. Founded in 1901, it is one of Poland's oldest musical institutions.
History
The orchestra was conceived on ...
in 2015 for Deutsche Grammophon
Deutsche Grammophon (; DGG) is a German classical music record label that was the precursor of the corporation PolyGram. Headquartered in Berlin Friedrichshain, it is now part of Universal Music Group (UMG) since its merger with the UMG family of ...
.
References
Sources
James Huneker: ''Chopin, The Man and His Music''
External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Allegro De Concert
Compositions by Frédéric Chopin
Compositions for solo piano
1841 compositions
Compositions in A major
Music with dedications