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Music open thread: Piano concertos [1]
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Date: 2025-05-12
When the Nazis invaded Warsaw, pianist Władysław Szpilman played on Polish radio. He played Chopin’s Nocturne in C-sharp minor, and maybe some other pieces. The Nocturne is significant because years later, when thirsty, hungry, dirty and very rusty at the piano after months without practicing, a German officer demanded Szpillman play something on a piano that probably was out of tune, and that’s the piece Szpillman chose to play.
According to an article from ORT’s Music and the Holocaust,
Szpilman was born 1911 in Poland. Early on he showed an aptitude for the piano, training in Warsaw and then, in the 1920s, moving to Berlin. In the exciting musical environment of Weimar Germany, Szpilman studied piano and composition at the Berlin Academy of Arts, working with Franz Schreker among others. When the Nazis took power in 1933 he returned to his family in Warsaw and worked as a pianist for Polish Radio. By 1939, he had composed many popular songs and classical works, and had made a name for himself as a pianist. This promising musical career was interrupted by the German invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939. Szpilman and his family were driven, along with hundreds of thousands of other Jews of the area, into the Warsaw ghetto. There, in order to acquire the food necessary to protect his family from starvation, he worked as a pianist at the Café Nowaczesna, a well-known gathering place for Nazis and collaborators. Surrounded by Nazis and wealthy Jews in the café, while thousands outside were starving to death, Szpilman wrote, 'I lost two illusions ... my belief in our general solidarity and in the musicality of the Jews'. ... ... The beginning of the end came in the summer of 1942, when large-scale deportations from the ghetto began. Szpilman watched as relatives and friends were sent on transports, but managed to keep his immediate family safe through luck and perseverance. Finally, however, they too were called for transport to ‘the East’ (Treblinka). As they were boarding the train, an unknown hand pulled him away to safety, however, and he watched as his family was sent to their deaths. Unable to walk freely outside because of the constant threat of discovery or denunciation, Szpilman relied on the generosity of friends, acquaintances and strangers to survive outside the ghetto walls. In the months that followed, Warsaw was largely destroyed and abandoned; Szpilman barely survived, moving from burnt-out building to building. After months of this existence, he became certain that he was the only person left alive in Warsaw. It was in the winter of 1945, while foraging, that he was to meet the German officer who was to save his life.
I came across Szpillman’s life story very indirectly. I remembered there had been an incident at the 2003 Oscars when Adrien Brody unexpectedly kissed Halle Berry. Brody won an Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading Role for as Szpillman in The Pianist, based on Szpillman’s autobiography. The screenwriter who adapted the autobiography also got an Oscar.
I can’t remember why I didn’t go see it back in 2002. In general, movies that win Oscars tend to not interest me. But there’s also the fact that Roman Polanski, the Oscar-winning director, fled the United States to evade accountability for a rape charge, the accuser a young girl.
Polansky’s crimes should not detract from our admiration of Szpillman’s musical talent and resilience surviving under fascism. I definitely intend to study Szpillman’s oeuvre and biography.
From what I gather, most of the music Szpillman played was for piano alone, and likewise for the music he composed. But he did compose a piano concertino that I haven’t had time to listen to yet.
Talking about piano concertos, you have to talk about Beethoven, who wrote five of them. Well, maybe six, I’ll come back to that very soon. My favorite of Beethoven’s piano concertos is No. 4 in G major, which starts out, quite unusually for Beethoven’s time, with the piano as the orchestra musicians stand by.
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There’s also a very good performance by Hélène Grimaud on YouTube.
Beethoven only wrote one violin concerto, Violin Concerto in D major, Opus 61, and he arranged it as a piano concerto, Opus 61a.
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A couple of years ago, I noticed that several Russian musical institutions have been renamed after Tchaikovsky. Which led me to the question: Is Dictator Vladimir Putin aware that Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky was gay?
It didn’t occur to me until much later to put that question to Google. The first result was a Reuters article from 2013.
Russia's pride in composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky, even though he was gay, is proof that the country does not discriminate against homosexuals, President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday. Putin was apparently seeking to ease concerns that a new law banning "gay propaganda" will be used to clamp down on gay rights. The law has been condemned abroad and brought calls from gay rights groups for a boycott of the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi.
Somehow that would not have eased my concerns if I had been going to Sochi. “Gay propaganda” is something that seems almost as nebulous as “formalism,” which certain Soviet composers were accused of.
Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat minor is famous for its stern opening followed by a very lyrical melody.
The brass at the beginning of Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat minor. Horns and trumpets shown at actual pitch.
The performance by Martha Argerich is just one of many great performances you can listen to on YouTube. No. 2 is almost forgotten aside from boxed sets of Tchaikovsky’s concertos, which partly explains why I’ve come to like it a lot more than No. 1. And No. 3 is quite grand. This following video is just the first movement.
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If I hadn’t mentioned formalism, I would have completely forgotten about Dmitri Shostakovich’s fun, mischievous and surprisingly happy Piano Concerto No. 2 in F major, Opus 102.
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Nikolai Kapustin was an Ukrainian composer who wound up living in Russia most of his life. A jazz composer, he wrote a few concertos for piano and orchestra.
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Robert Schumann wrote a Piano Concerto in A minor, as did his wife, Clara.
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I used to think that Antonio Salieri wrote piano concerti as boring as the ones by his colleague Wolfgang Amadeus, but maybe it’s just because the one recording that I listened to, with Pietro Spada as the soloist and conductor, just wasn’t that engaging.
I found this performance with Heeguin Kim to be so immediately engaging that I actually listened to it twice before putting it in my draft of this article.
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I’d like to close out this part on a much lighter note than I started it. P.D.Q. Bach, the twenty-first of Johann Sebastian Bach’s twenty children, wrote a Concerto for Piano versus Orchestra.
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The open thread question: What is your favorite ensemble music with piano solos?
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