Friedrich Gernsheim - Piano Concerto in C Minor, Op.16

- - - Intro: [0:00] I. Allegro [0:05] II. Larghetto [11:32] III. Rondo. Allegro [21:08] - - - Piano: Oliver Triendl Orchestra: Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Mainz Conductor: Hermann Bäumer - - - Friedrich Gernsheim was a German composer, conductor and pianist. According to the few who have studied Friedrich Gernsheim’s music, he is usually categorized as a Romantic composer heavily influenced by Johannes Brahms. While he certainly did learn from the great composer, Gernsheim began his composition career prior to hearing Brahms and his influence was only discovered later. Christopher Fifield suggests that Gernsheim owes his “instrumentation, thematic shapes, accompaniments, and orchestral textures” to both Brahms and Max Bruch.[3] In fact, some believe Gernsheim’s symphonic work to resemble Bruch more than Brahms, but homages to both masters are present in his music. Unlike Bruch, however, Gernsheim is described as having his own “personal melodic language” and was more daring in his harmony, whereas Bruch was largely inspired by folk songs. After the premier of Gernsheim’s first symphony, which predated Brahms’s first symphony, Gernsheim’s themes were praised for possessing an “abundance of beautiful details,” many of which pass by the listener unnoticed in the first hearing.[3] The same critic claimed that his treatment of instrumentation “reveals a very talented hand,” and many listeners preferred Gernsheim’s symphonies to those by Brahms. Bruch, for one, considered Gernsheim’s first symphony a work that “ranks without question among the best that has been written in this genre in our time.” He even called Brahms’s symphonies overrated and agreed with critics in that Gernsheim demonstrated a great advantage over those of his contemporaries: “its excellent orchestration.”