Four Centuries of Great Music July 24, 2021 Solo Concertos

Last week on Four Centuries of Great music we celebrated the concerto grosso which is a work for more than one soloist with orchestra.  Today we are celebrating the solo concerto.  Last week we focused on the 18^th and 20^th and 21^st centuries, but today we are focusing on the 18^th and 19^th centuries.  Lets start with some Mozart and his Bassoon Concerto. 

The Bassoon Concerto in B-flat major, K. 191 was  written in 1774. It is the most often performed and studied piece in the entire bassoon repertory.[1] Nearly all professional bassoonists will perform the piece at some stage in their career, and it is probably the most commonly requested piece in orchestral auditions for bassoonists  Mozart wrote the bassoon concerto when he was 18 years old, finishing it in June 1774 and it was his first concerto for a wind instrument.

The piece is divided into three movements:    The first movement, Allegro, is written in the common sonata form with an orchestral introduction. The second movement, Andante ma Adagio, is a slow and lyrical sonata without development that contains a theme which was later featured in the Countess's aria "Porgi, Amor" at the beginning of the second act of Mozart's opera Le nozze di Figaro. The final movement, Rondo: tempo di menuetto is as stated in rondo form.

Felix Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E minor, Op. 64, is his last large orchestral work. It holds an important place in the violin repertoire and is one of the most popular and most frequently performed violin concertos in history.   But today we will be doing his other Violin Concerto, the D minor concerto for violin and strings written when he was 13.  The work was virtually unknown until Yehudi Menuhin, the violin virtuoso, was shown the manuscript of the concerto in the spring of 1951 in London by Albi Rosenthal, an amateur violinist and rare books dealer. Menuhin bought the rights to the concerto from members of the Mendelssohn family residing in Switzerland and edited the concerto for performance and had it published by Peters Edition.

On 4 February 1952, Menuhin premiered the concerto at Carnegie Hall conducting the concerto from the violin. Menuhin played the work often in recital, and made three recordings of it. Menuhin himself loved the concerto and wrote comparing the two Mendelssohn concertos:

 "Both violin concertos are in minor, in a somewhat tumultuous mood: The written out cadenzas, of the second and third movements; a long solo passage of short notes in the last movement reminiscent of the passage of the third of the E minor which ushers in the recapitulation...

"The Concerto in D minor is full of invention and not in any way inhibited by too-strict traditional concepts. It exhibits, in fact, a remarkable freedom and elasticity of form. There is, for instance, a condensation and amplification with Schubertarian modulations of the exposition in the recapitulation for the first movement, and also a completely spontaneous treatment of the third.”

Vincenzo Bellini is known for his composition for the voice – operas and arts songs.  But he did compose a number of works for instrumentalists including 8 symphonies and concertos and sonatas.  One of these is the Trombone Concerto.

Franz Liszt wrote drafts for his Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 2 in A major, in 1839 to 1840 during his virtuoso performing period,. He then put away the manuscript for a decade. When he returned to the concerto, he revised and scrutinized it repeatedly. His student Hans von Bronsart gave the first performance, with Liszt conducting, in Weimar on January 7, 1857. However Liszt continue to revise the manuscript with the final version we know today being produced 1861.

Adagio sostenuto assai – introductory themes

Allegro agitato assai - This is technically the scherzo of the piece

Allegro moderato  - The opening theme is played by solo cello while accompanied by the piano, showing the influence of Italian bel canto on Liszt's work.

Allegro deciso

Marziale marz-zee-al eee    un poco meno allegro with Yet another transformation of the gentle opening theme with a march-like rhythm

Allegro animato

We don’t have enough time left for a full concerto to end tonight’s program on concertos, but I did want to end with a wonderful piece for violin and orchestra that is often overlooked.  And that is the Romance in G major for Violin and Orchestra  by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor.  Samuel Coleridge Taylor was born in London to an English mother and African father and neither parent was musical.  He began studying the violin at 6 and rapidly progressed with his studies.  By the age of 12 or 13 he was described as a “brilliant performer”. In 1890, at fifteen years of age, Coleridge-Taylor became a violin student at the Royal College of Music.  At the Royal College of music he began composing and playing the piano. In 1892, after having one of his compositions published by Novello, Coleridge-Taylor changed his major to composition and by the end of that same year, Novello published four more of his works. He remained at the Royal College of Music for 7 more years.  During that time his classmates included Gustav Holst and Ralph Vaughn Williams.  Shortly after leaving the Royal Academy he published his Romance in G major for Violin and Orchestra            his opus 39 in 1889.  He went on to write many additional works for violin including his Violin Concerto in G minor, Op. 80 in 1912.

It was also during this same period, 1898-1900 that he wrote his landmark piece The Song of Hiawatha based upon the Longfellow poems and became one of his most famous works during his lifetime and even today.  Despite having hundred’s of thousands of copies of his work Hiawatha's Wedding Feast sold during his lifetime, he did not make any money off of the publication having sold his rights away for the Song of Hiawatha for 6 guineas (a little over 6 pounds in modern money).  He died impoverished on September 1^st 1912 of pnemonia.