Piano Concerto No. 2 (Hummel)

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Johann Nepomuk Hummel's Piano Concerto No. 2 in A minor, Op. 85 was written in 1816 and published in Vienna in 1821. [1]

Contents

Unlike his earlier piano concerti, which closely followed the model of Mozart's, it is written in a proto-Romantic style that anticipates the later stylistic developments of composers such as Frédéric Chopin, Franz Liszt and Felix Mendelssohn. [2] In this regard, it is similar to the slightly later Piano Concerto No. 3.

It was considered a showpiece of its time by pianists such as Robert Schumann. [3]

Scoring

The concerto is scored for piano, flute, two oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, and strings.

Movements

The work is composed in traditional three movement form. There is a solo transition in the second movement leading into the Rondo without pause.

Influence

Although Hummel's music, seen as essentially Mozartian in style, had fallen out of fashion by the 1830s, the A minor concerto nonetheless exercised considerable influence over a number of works that helped to usher in the Romantic style. Frédéric Chopin, who had played the Hummel concerti, drew from elements of the A minor concerto in his own piano concerti. [4]

Musicologist Mark Kroll has suggested that Chopin's piano concerti in general were influenced by those of Hummel. [5] The A minor concerto da camera of Charles-Valentin Alkan has also been noted for its debt to Hummel's style of writing for the keyboard. [6]

While Robert Schumann was critical of much of Hummel's work as a composer, [7] he had made a close study of the A minor concerto in 1828 [8] and considered it one of the works (along with the F-sharp minor piano sonata) of his "heyday". [9] And in his own A minor concerto, Schumann makes reference to aspects of Hummel's virtuosic style. [10]

Notes

  1. ↑ Mikio Tao, Works Catalogue of Hummel, (pdf)
  2. ↑ MF Humphries, The Piano Concertos of Johann Nepomuk Hummel Dissertation (Northwestern University, 1957)
  3. ↑ Stefaniak, Alexander (2016-09-19). Schumann's Virtuosity: Criticism, Composition, and Performance in Nineteenth-Century Germany. Indiana University Press. ISBN   978-0-253-02209-7.
  4. ↑ Chopin: The Piano Concertos, John Rink, Cambridge University Press, 1997, ISBN   0521446600, pp. 59 & 65.
  5. ↑ Kroll, Mark (2007). Johann Nepomuk Hummel: A Musician's Life and World. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN   978-0-8108-5920-3.
  6. ↑ Structural Novelty and Tradition in the Early Romantic Piano Concerto, p.116 ISBN   1576470008
  7. ↑ Mark Kroll, Johann Nepomuk Hummel: A Musician's Life and World, Rowman & Littlefield, 2007, ISBN   0810859203, pp. 275-78
  8. ↑ Schumann, Hummel, and "The Clarity of a Well-Planned Composition", Eric Frederick Jensen, Studia Musicologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, T. 40, Fasc. 1/3 (1999), pp. 59- 70
  9. ↑ NZfM, 1840, Schumann, "Concertstücke und Concerte für Pianoforte" p. 39 "...ein Werk aus seiner Blüthenzeit, der das A-moll-Konzert..."
  10. ↑ Macdonald, Claudia. "Schumann's earliest compositions and performances." Journal of Musicological Research 7.2-3 (1987): 259-283, PAGE NUMBER & DOI MISSING

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References

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