Xaver Scharwenka - Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor

Composer: Franz Xaver Scharwenka (6 January 1850 -- 8 December 1924) Orchestra: Hamburg Symphony Orchestra Conductor: Richard Kapp Soloist: Michael Ponti Year of recording: 1969-1971 Concerto for piano & orchestra No. 2 in C Minor, Op. 56, written in 1881. 00:00 - I. Allegro 17:19 - II. Adagio 25:53 - III. Allegro non troppo When he returned to the genre in 1881, with the Second Piano Concerto in C minor, Scharwenka seemed stylistically to be taking a step back. The concerto 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 – at almost twenty minutes, it constitutes half of the concerto – 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. Although the finale lacks the prominent characteristic of the krakowiak – a syncopated emphasis on the second note – the rising melodic line and ornamental turns and trills are very much a part of that duple-metre Polish dance. The vivacious main idea is interspersed with quieter moments, and towards the end Scharwenka softens the folk rhythms with triplets. As the music in the closing stages heads through tonal peregrinations that are startling even for him, Scharwenka cannot resist a brief backward glance, in the major key, to the concerto’s opening idea.