Xaver Scharwenka: Piano Concerto No.2 in C Minor, Op.56, Alexander Markovich (piano)
Franz Xaver Scharwenka - Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor Op. 56 (1881), Alexander Markovich (piano), Estonian National Symphony Orchestra, Neeme Järvi (conductor) Recorded: 10-11 June 2013 I. Allegro – 00:00 II. Adagio – 18:51 III. Allegro non troppo – 28:57 Franz Xaver Scharwenka (6 January 1850 – 8 December 1924) was a Polish-German pianist composer and teacher of Bohemian-Polish descent (His paternal ancestors originally came from Prague). He was the brother of Ludwig Philipp Scharwenka (1847–1917), who was also a composer and teacher of music. „He debuted as a pianist at the Singakademie in 1869 and was hired to teach piano at the academy. In December, 1874, he began his first concert tour. During his career he would take many tours, traveling throughout Europe, the United States, and Canada. In 1877 he premiered his piano concerto in B flat, written primarily as a showpiece for himself. It and an earlier work (Polish Dance, Op. 3, No. 1, of 1869) are his most popular works and one of the few frequently played today. His output as a composer was not large – an opera, a symphony, chamber music, and works for solo piano – although his principal opus numbers run into the eighties. Scharwenka was, nevertheless, a much lauded and beloved figure during his lifetime, and central to his profile were the four piano concertos that spanned over thirty years of his career. These faded somewhat from view after his death, but in the last decades of the twentieth century interest in them revived and, while they are not prominent on the concert platform, they have received a number of recordings in recent years. The Second Piano Concerto in C minor has less rhetorical and lyrical sweep than its predecessor and more of a conservative hue. The figure of Brahms looms large, not only in the scale of the first movement, but also in the greater muscularity of the solo part and the more conventional interchanges between soloist and orchestra. The piano writing is more challenging too, made weightier by the doubling of its lines in sixths, another Brahmsian trait. Yet Chopin is never far away. After the muted strings have opened the central Adagio, the piano embarks on a Chopinesque nocturne, marked dolce. Its tranquillity, despite occasional forthright moments, is a perfect foil not only for the grandness of the opening Allegro but also for the sparkling folk dance that infuses the finale. This movement may draw comparison with the finale of Brahms’s Second Piano Concerto, also completed in 1881, but here the 2/4 metre evidently looks towards Scharwenka’s native Poland.” (extract from review by Adrian Thomas, 2014)
Franz Xaver Scharwenka - Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor Op. 56 (1881), Alexander Markovich (piano), Estonian National Symphony Orchestra, Neeme Järvi (conductor) Recorded: 10-11 June 2013 I. Allegro – 00:00 II. Adagio – 18:51 III. Allegro non troppo – 28:57 Franz Xaver Scharwenka (6 January 1850 – 8 December 1924) was a Polish-German pianist composer and teacher of Bohemian-Polish descent (His paternal ancestors originally came from Prague). He was the brother of Ludwig Philipp Scharwenka (1847–1917), who was also a composer and teacher of music. „He debuted as a pianist at the Singakademie in 1869 and was hired to teach piano at the academy. In December, 1874, he began his first concert tour. During his career he would take many tours, traveling throughout Europe, the United States, and Canada. In 1877 he premiered his piano concerto in B flat, written primarily as a showpiece for himself. It and an earlier work (Polish Dance, Op. 3, No. 1, of 1869) are his most popular works and one of the few frequently played today. His output as a composer was not large – an opera, a symphony, chamber music, and works for solo piano – although his principal opus numbers run into the eighties. Scharwenka was, nevertheless, a much lauded and beloved figure during his lifetime, and central to his profile were the four piano concertos that spanned over thirty years of his career. These faded somewhat from view after his death, but in the last decades of the twentieth century interest in them revived and, while they are not prominent on the concert platform, they have received a number of recordings in recent years. The Second Piano Concerto in C minor has less rhetorical and lyrical sweep than its predecessor and more of a conservative hue. The figure of Brahms looms large, not only in the scale of the first movement, but also in the greater muscularity of the solo part and the more conventional interchanges between soloist and orchestra. The piano writing is more challenging too, made weightier by the doubling of its lines in sixths, another Brahmsian trait. Yet Chopin is never far away. After the muted strings have opened the central Adagio, the piano embarks on a Chopinesque nocturne, marked dolce. Its tranquillity, despite occasional forthright moments, is a perfect foil not only for the grandness of the opening Allegro but also for the sparkling folk dance that infuses the finale. This movement may draw comparison with the finale of Brahms’s Second Piano Concerto, also completed in 1881, but here the 2/4 metre evidently looks towards Scharwenka’s native Poland.” (extract from review by Adrian Thomas, 2014)