Henselt and Moszkowski
We might have had performances of concertos by these composers by Jorge Bolet.
'Only in the 1970s did record companies became interested in unknown composers and unknown piano concertos.
'At that time, I talked with Jorge about him playing the Moszkowski piano concerto in E major, which I believe would be wonderful. Jorge knew the work, told me it was great, but did not want to take it into his repertoire fearing the conductors and orchestras who would not understand it.
'I also mentioned the Henselt Concerto in F minor Op. 16 which I believe is the greatest ,most extravagant piano concerto coming out of the Romantic period. (Listen to Raymond Lewenthal - in my opinion he displays too much drive and too little sonority but is never the less my best choice for the work. Here Jorge also feared the conductor and the orchestra. Here I have to admit that Jorge had a point, as I often witnessed myself how bad Jorge was treated when playing Sgambati and Hummel and even Liszt's concertos.
'All this changed, of course, when Jorge at long last became known as a world class pianist but even then he had to deal with conductors like Solti.'
Mattheus Smits, Netherlands
Adolph von Henselt (1814-1889)
Of the myriad contributions to the genre written during the first part of the nineteenth century, Henselt’s Piano Concerto in F minor, Op 16, is the one whose neglect is the hardest to explain. It has the composer’s individual stamp on every bar, it is original in its writing (if not its structure), its orchestration is more than adequate and at times masterly, its themes are varied and memorable, the musical and technical challenges for the soloist are equalled only by their effect on the listener, and the whole work has the feel of white-hot inspiration. Henselt never reached the same height again. Is it a good piece of music? Yes. The piece may not offer revolutionary concepts (indeed, much of it is firmly rooted in the past), but that does not alter its intrinsic merit. It should be part of the core repertoire.
Where did it come from? What was the genesis of this most demanding of Romantic concertos? Its composer was born on 9 May 1814 at Schwabach, a small town in Bavaria, close to Nuremberg. His father Philipp Eduard Henselt is described variously as a cotton manufacturer or cotton weaver, whose marriage to Caroline Geigenmüller produced six children. When Adolf was three the family moved to Munich. It was not a musical family but he had his first piano lessons at the age of five, gave his first public recital when he was fifteen and, in 1831, under the auspices of King Ludwig I of Bavaria, was granted a stipend to study piano in Weimar with Hummel and composition in Vienna with the master theorist and pedagogue Simon Sechter.
His early success touring Germany and Russia was underlined by the reception of his sets of studies (Opp 2 & 5) published in 1837 and 1838. The Douze études caractéristiques de concert (Op 2). These were followed by the Douze études de salon (dedicated to HRH Marie the Queen of Saxony) which, with the previous set of twelve, alternate through all the major and minor keys.
These studies attracted a lot of attention for the young virtuoso, many of them presenting technical problems different from those in Chopin’s two sets (published a few years previously) but still maintaining the new concept of exercises wrapped in poetry. They were Henselt’s ‘calling card’ and to the present day remain beyond the capabilities of many pianists.
Given the paucity of his creativity, the extent of his influence on piano playing is remarkable for two reasons. First by way of the prodigious technical invention of the études (and, for that matter, the Concerto).
The second influence Henselt had on piano playing was a result of his position in the cultural life of Russia. His triumph as a visiting concert pianist in St Petersburg in 1838 led immediately to him being named Court Pianist. From then until his death Henselt spent all but the summer months each year in the Russian city where he enjoyed a princely lifestyle and was on intimate terms with three successive tsars.
And this does not take into account the influence of Henselt’s own private pupils. Among them were Rachmaninov’s grandfather and Nicolai Zverev. Zverev taught Rachmaninov himself, Lhevinne, Siloti and Scriabin. Here we have the foundations of the present Russian school of piano-playing with its emphasis on singing melody and freedom of hand movement. Henselt’s contribution to the piano was at least as significant as that of Liszt and Leschetizky.
Henselt played his F minor Concerto in public only rarely. Liszt, it is said, sight-read the whole work from the manuscript. Other pianists who included it in their repertoire were Liszt’s pupils Hans von Bülow, Arthur Friedheim and Emil Sauer, the latter playing it at his New York debut in 1899. Busoni played it, and so did his pupil Egon Petri (who said it was one of the hardest pieces he had ever played). Louis Moreau Gottschalk is said to have performed it, and also Vladimir de Pachmann, who knew Henselt and edited his works. So it comes as something of a surprise after this list of barnstormers to learn that it was Clara Schumann who gave its first performance. This was in 1844 (though the work was not published until two years later).
The finale has been likened by Raymond Lewenthal to ‘a prophecy of the doom of the Tzarist regime as it frantically, furiously, frivolously dances its way to perdition’. Not such a fanciful picture, for there is a strong Russian flavour to this movement; its second subject could be a waltz by someone like Arensky, and can we not hear Tchaikovsky somewhere just round the corner? Although its spine may be in the well-worked European tradition, its character is distinctly un-French and -German.
Jeremy Nicholas (shortened version)
Moszkowski, Moritz (1854-1925)
‘After Chopin,’ wrote Paderewski, ‘Moritz Moszkowski best understands how to write for the piano, and his writing embraces the whole gamut of piano technique.’ The two pianist-composers had more than their art in common. Both were Poles (though Moszkowski was born in Breslau, then the capital of Silesia in Germany).
Born in 1854 into a wealthy family, Moritz Moszkowski began music studies at an early age in Dresden, continued at the Stern Conservatory in Berlin and then went on to Theodor Kullak, a pupil of Czerny, at the Neue Akademie der Tonkunst. (Among his fellow students there were the brothers Philip and Xaver Scharwenka who remained friends throughout his life.) He made his debut as a concert pianist in Berlin when he was nineteen and for the next 24 years gave recitals all over Europe, taught at Kullak’s Academy, conducted and composed. When he settled in Paris at the age of 43 he was a famous and well-respected musician.
But of all the melodious and elegant works of Moritz Moszkowski it is his Piano Concerto in E, Op 59, that most strongly begs for revival. It is not a short work and it is not an easy work for the soloist, but its grateful pianistic writing, its memorable themes and its sunny optimism make its present neglect quite incomprehensible. No one could pretend that it is deep music, but if, as one writer put it, ‘it fails to stir the intellect, it sets the pulses tingling’.
The Concerto is dedicated ‘à Monsieur Josef Casimir Hofmann’—a singular tribute to a 22-year-old—who had studied briefly with Moszkowski in his teens. It is one of the very few written in the key of E major. It was also virtually the last large-scale work that Moszkowski attempted. Ten years after its composition he was, at the age of 54, already a recluse, constantly ill. He had lost his wife and daughter, his son had been summoned to serve in the French army, and he was, as one friend described him, ‘no longer buoyed by ambition’. He sold all the copyrights of his music and invested the enormous capital in German, Polish and Russian bonds. With the advent of the First World War he lost everything and lingered on till 1925, too sick in body and mind to do anything, dying of stomach cancer in Paris, a pauper.
Jeremy Nicholas (shortened version)
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