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N CONCERTO No. 1, ING MINOR BIN HOOD DELL ORCHESTRA...ERICH LEINSDORF

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Gries CONCERTO IN A MINOR, Op. 16 Mendelssohn CONCERTO No. 1, IN G MINOR, Op. 25

ANIA DOREFMANN, Pianist

Robin Hood Dell Orchestra of Philadelphia + Erich Lemsdorf, Conductor

Grieg Concerto in A Minor, Op. 16

The late Constant Lambert was cruel but brilliant when

he said “All you can do with a folk tune, once you have

played it, is play it over again rather louder.” The remark

is exaggerated, but it pinpoints the fact that there is a

profound difference between a tune and a theme. Folk

tunes do not lend themselves well to the manipulation re-

quired by the larger forms of composition, and composers,

like Grieg, who are fascinated with musical folklore, are

likely to be masters of the miniature rather than the epical.

Grieg’s piano concerto is his only work in large form in-

volving the orchestra, and it is decidedly less folkloristic

in its coloring than is most of his music.

The concerto, composed in 1868, is indebted to Schu-

mann and Liszt; and its score, which Grieg revised several

times, probably embodies suggestions offered by the latter

composer when the Norwegian musician called on him in

Rome in 1870. “Liszt is surrounded by young ladies who

would like to eat him up with hair and hide,” wrote Grieg

at the time. “Their admiration is simply comic. They com-

peted for the honor of standing by his side, of touching a

corner of his long abbé’s robe, making occasion to press

his hand, even ignoring with complete want of considera-

tion the space every player needs for the movement of his

arms. These ladies crowded around him at the piano when

he played later, their greedy eyes fixed upon his fingers

as though they might be expected to disappear at any

moment into the already gaping mouths of the little beasts

of prey.”

Grieg showed Liszt the manuscript of his concerto. The

great man asked him to play it, and when he said he could

not, “Liszt took the manuscript, went to the piano, and

said, with his own peculiar smile, “Then I shall show you

that I can’t play it either.’ ”” Whereupon he performed it

at sight to perfection, and when he came to the broad

second theme of the last movement he got up from the

piano and stalked about the room bellowing the tune at the

top of his voice. When it was all over he told Grieg “Sie

haben das Zeug dazu,” which can only be translated as

“You have the stuff,” and he sent him on his way with an

admonition not to be afraid.

The concerto is extremely rich in thematic material but

not very complex in its handling. If echoes of folk music

are to be found in it, the reason is that Grieg invented

Norway, musically speaking, quite as much as Norway

invented Grieg. The entry of the piano in the slow move-

ment has always seemed to the writer to provide a perfect

tone picture of an icy mountain rivulet breaking from a

snowbank.

% * &

Mendelssohn Concerto No. 1, in G Minor, Op. 25

“Tt is a glorious feeling to waken in the moruizig and know

that you are going to write the score of a grand allegro

with all sorts of instruments, and various oboes and

trumpets, whilst bright weather holds out the hope of a

cheering long walk in the afternoon. This is what I have

enjoyed for a whole week past... .”

So wrote Mendelssohn to his father on October 6, 1831,

and the work on which he was engaged was, in all prob-

ability, the Piano Concerto in G Minor; Mendelssohn gave

it its first performance exactly eleven days later, and not

long thereafter he referred to it as “a thing rapidly thrown

off.” In the fall of 1831 Mendelssohn was twenty-two years

old; he had stopped for a time in Munich on the three-year

grand tour of Europe which his wealthy parents had given

him to complete his education; and he was in fabulously

high spirits. The letter of October 6 refers to a round of

parties wherein Mendelssohn improvised on the piano

“with nothing in my head but wine glasses, cold cuts, and.

ham,” but there is evidence to show that there was some-

thing else in his head, too. Her name was Delphine von

Schauroth. She was seventeen, she played the piano very

well, and the G Minor Piano Concerto is dedicated to her.

This concerto is a youth-work and is relatively light in

substance, but it is none the less a milestone in the history

of music. As John Waterhouse puts it in his book, The

Concerto: “More than twenty years separate Mendels-

sohn’s G minor piano concerto from Beethoven’s Emperor

(1809). A great many concertos were composed, played,

and published during that period, but not one of them

holds a place in the standard repertory of today.” Water-

house overlooks the two Chopin concertos of 1829-30, but

his generalization is roughly correct. It was the era of the

flash virtuoso — Hummel, Moscheles, Czerny, and count-

less others — in whose hands the Mozart-Beethoven con-

certo tradition was going to seed. In Mendelssohn’s G

Minor Concerto the new, romantic tradition of this form

sprang into existence.

Particularly noteworthy is Mendelssohn’s abandonment

of the previously obligatory ritornello wherein all the

thematic ideas of the first movement were set forth by the

orchestra before the entrance of the solo instrument. The

star performer here takes command from the beginning;

furthermore there are no cadenzas, while the three move-

ments of the concerto run together without pause, and the

unity of the conception is emphasized by flashbacks to the

first movement during the course of the last. In other

words, the concerto is here on its way to merging with the

symphonic poem; and the fact that all this had been pre-

dicted by Karl Maria von Weber in his Konzertstuck of

1821 only underlines what Emerson said about the in-

debtedness of genius.

Notes by ALFRED FRANKENSTEIN

© by Radio Corporation of America, 1957

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