Piano HistoryClassical Music Appreciation and the Concerto

TED TALKS

•Benjamin Zander: The transformative power of classical music.

•http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9LCwI5iErE

The Concerto•From the Italian, meaning to play

together. Where we get the word Concert.

•A Concerto is a piece of music composed for any solo instrument, accompanied by an orchestra (w/ strings) or wind band (w/o strings).

•Concerti (pl) are usually composed in three movements.

Cadenza

•Cadence comes from the Italian word cadence (or end of a section, like a period)

•A cadence is a naturally falling progression of chords which usually ends at the I or V chord.

•Each Movement of a concerto ends ends in a cadence.

•Often the solo performer would go off on a flight of fancy, improvising a long stream of notes and rhythms settling in the final progression.

•These cadenzas were not usually written in the music by the composer/ performer but were only put to paper later.

Cadenza example

•Mozart Piano Concerto No. 17 in G Major https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LREkrrO6Sto

Baroque/ Classical Erac. 1600 - c. 1730

• The keyboard instrument was usually played by the conductor (often the composer) who had his back to the audience.

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFfUcQQbwsE

Keyboard Audience

= orchestra

Romantic Erac. 1830 - 1900

•Franz Liszt changes the arrangement of solo and concerto performances for piano.

•He turns the piano in profile so the audience may see his profile.

•Liszt was classical musics Elvis

Ludwig von Beethoven

• No. 5 in E-flat Major

• Premiered in November 1811, in Leipzig, Germany.

• A few months later, it was premiered in Vienna by Carl Czerny, one of Beethoven’s students and future teacher of Franz Liszt, at the age of 12.

• Known as the “Emperor” Concerto. One story of the name is that a french officer at the Vienna premier stood up and exclaimed “C’est l’empereur de concerti!” or “This is the Emperor of all Concerti!”

• This piece is unique in the fact that it opens with the solo piano, where most concerti open with the orchestra.

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj9bXn4jr6M

Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky•No. 1 in B-flat minor, Mvt 1

•Tchaikovsky was a piano player but was a much better composer (nutcracker, sleeping beauty). He wrote this piece with his friend Nikolai Rubinstein in mind to perform it.

•http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=RG83EmwJpo8

Sergei Rachmaninoff

• Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor

• Completed in 1909

• Dedicated to pianist Josef Hoffman, who never performed the piece himself stating that it was “not for him”

• Premiered on November 28, 1909, in NYC by Rachmaninoff himself.

• Performed as the final piece in the 2001 Van Cliburn Competition by Russian Pianist Olga Kern.

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AapjpeqmviM

20th Century Jazz Concerto

• Commissioned in 1925 by conductor Walter Damrosch

• Damrosch had been in the audience at the premier of Rhapsody in Blue

• Work premiered at Carnegie Hall in December 1925

• Reviews were mixed, Russian composers Igor Stravinsky and Sergei Prokofiev disagreed on the work. Stravinsky thought it was genius and Prokofiev is said to have disliked it intensely.

• George Gershwin Piano Concerto in F Mvt 3

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxUHcXUJZgY