Concerto

Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in D Minor: Climbing Everest

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Sergei Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor, Op. 30 has been called “the Everest of piano concertos.” Rachmaninov composed it during the summer of 1909 at Ivanovka, his estate in the steppes of southern Russia, before embarking on his lucrative first American concert tour. Without time to properly learn the solo part, the composer practiced on a “silent keyboard” during the trans-Atlantic voyage. He performed it, first with Walter Damrosch and …

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Michael Torke’s “Last Year”: Music for Solo Violin and String Orchestra

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Last Year by American composer Michael Torke (b. 1961) suggests the beautiful melancholy of a cold, overcast winter day. The solo violin’s contemplative melody emerges over frigid, unrelenting pizzicati. As the music develops, the concertmaster picks up the melody and enters into a duet with the soloist. To my ears, there are echoes of the music of Tchaikovsky at its loneliest and most brooding. This is part of a collection of twelve meditative …

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Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 5 in A Major, “Turkish”: Isabelle Faust, Bernard Haitink and the Boston Symphony Orchestra

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For Mozart, a virtuoso keyboardist from the age of 5, the violin was a second instrument. Following his teenage years, Mozart largely abandoned performing publicly on the violin to focus on the piano. He composed his 21 mature piano concertos from age 20 to the final year of his life. Still, by all accounts, Mozart played the violin exceptionally well. In 1756, the year of Mozart’s birth, his father Leopold published a …

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Saint-Saëns’ Piano Concerto No. 2: Dmitry Shishkin with Mischa Damev and the Mariinsky Orchestra

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After hearing the premiere of Camille Saint-Saëns’ Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor, the pianist and composer Sigmond Stojowski remarked that it “began with Bach and ended with Offenbach.” In a previous post, we explored this brilliant and exhilarating work, which shakes up the traditional concerto form with a slow and solemn first movement, a bright scherzo for the second movement, and a concluding presto. Now, let’s listen to this emotionally …

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Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 9 in E-flat Major, “Jeunehomme”: Dramatic Surprises

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Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 9 in E-flat Major, K. 271 is revolutionary music filled with dramatic surprises. It has been called “one of the greatest wonders of the world” (Alfred Brendel), “perhaps the first unequivocal masterpiece of the classical style” (Charles Rosen), “Mozart’s Eroica” (Alfred Einstein), and the concerto in which “Mozart, so to speak, became Mozart” (Michael Steinberg). The 21-year-old Mozart composed this music in January of 1777, months before he …

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Barber’s Violin Concerto: Aaron Rosand’s 1960 New York Philharmonic Debut

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“Romanticism on the violin had a rebirth last night in Carnegie Hall,” wrote New York Times critic Harold C. Schonberg in 1970, following a recital by American violinist Aaron Rosand (1927-2019). A decade earlier, in October of 1960, Rosand made his New York Philharmonic debut, performing Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto. Leonard Bernstein was on the podium, and Barber was in attendance. Bernstein and Rosand had agreed to record the Concerto, but the …

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Mozart’s Horn Concerto No. 4 in E-flat Major: Music Born of Friendship

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In his catalogue, Mozart referred to the Horn Concerto No. 4 in E-flat Major, K. 495 as “a hunting horn concerto for Leutgeb.” (“Ein Waldhorn Konzert für den Leutgeb”). Joseph Leutgeb (1732-1811) was Austria’s preeminent horn player. While employed as a court musician in Salzburg, he had known Mozart as a child. Later in Vienna, the two became close friends. Composed in 1786, the Concerto is filled with warmth and good humor. …

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