Piano Concertos

Chopin's E minor and F minor Piano Concertos played a vital role in his career as a composer-pianist. Praised for their originality and genius when he performed them, the concertos later attracted censure for ostensible weaknesses in form, development and orchestration. They also suffered at the hands of editors and performers, all the while remaining enormously popular. This handbook re-evaluates the concertos against the traditions that shaped them so that their many outstanding qualities can be fully appreciated. It describes their genesis, Chopin's own performances and his use of them as a teacher. A survey of their critical, editorial and performance histories follows, in preparation for an analytical 're-enactment' of the music - that is, a narrative account of the concertos as embodied in sound, rather than in the score. The final chapter investigates Chopin's enigmatic 'third concerto', the Allegro de concert. Chopin: The Piano Concertos has won the Wilk Book Prize for Research in Polish Music.

Now regarded by many in the music world as a classic, Hutchings' study of Mozart's piano concertos provides a clear approach, supported by numerous musical illustrations and biographical notes, to each work.

A celebration and exploration of a monumental achievement

A ballet in three acts and four scenes by Léo Delibes.

This early work on Mozart's Piano Concertos is both expensive and hard to find in its first edition. It contains analyses of the themes and structure of some of Mozart's greatest piano compositions. This is a fascinating work and thoroughly recommended for anyone interested in music theory. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

Full scores of 5 great Beethoven piano concertos, reproduced from the authoritative Breitkopf & Härtel edition, with all cadenzas as he wrote them. The works reveal the pianistic and orchestral mastery of Beethoven's early and middle periods as well as his innovative genius. New table of contents.

This study investigates the interactive relationship between the piano and the orchestra in Mozart's concertos by exploring the historical implications and hermeneutic potential of dramatic dialogue.

Classic of music criticism provides detailed studies of 23 of Mozart's piano concertos, offering 417 musical examples and authoritative information on the works' form, tone, style, and balance.

Mozart's piano concertos stand alongside his operas and symphonies as his most frequently performed and best loved music. They have attracted the attention of generations of musicologists who have explored their manifold meanings from a variety of viewpoints. In this study, John Irving brings together the various strands of scholarship surrounding Mozart's concertos including analytical approaches, aspects of performance practice and issues of compositional genesis based on investigation of manuscript and early printed editions. Treating the concertos collectively as a repertoire, rather than as individual works, the first section of the book tackles broad thematic issues such as the role of the piano concerto in Mozart's quasi-freelance life in late eighteenth-century Vienna, the origin of his concertos in earlier traditions of concerto writing; eighteenth-century theoretical frameworks for the understanding of movement forms, subsequent historical shifts in the perception of the concerto's form, listening strategies and performance practices. This is followed by a 'documentary register' which proceeds through all 23 original works, drawing together information on the source materials. Accounts of the concertos' compositional genesis, early performance history and reception are also included here, drawing extensively on the Mozart family correspondence and other contemporary reports. Drawing together and synthesizing this wealth of material, Irving provides an invaluable reference source for those already familiar with this repertoire.

Mozart’s Piano Concertos, especially those composed during the years 1784-’91, are still held in high esteem, two centuries later, by both amateur music-lovers and professional musicians. Strangely enough, only very few comprehensive studies exist on this remarkable section of Mozart’s output. The present study, first published in German in a slightly abridged form, deals with Mozart’s evolution as a composer of piano concertos; sheds light on the connections between the concertos and other fields of creative activity, as well as on those with other composers of his time. Finally, attention is paid to problems of performance practice. The author, born in 1914, emeritus professor of Utrecht University and former chairman of the Zentralinstitut für Mozart-Forschung, Salzburg, has been involved with the subject of Mozart’s concertos for about 60 years.