Anton Rubinstein - Piano Concerto 전곡

 

Anton Rubinstein

 

 

November 28 [O.S. November 16] 1829 – November 20 [O.S. November 8] 1894)

 Russian pianist, composer and conductor who became a pivotal figure in Russian culture when

he founded the Saint Petersburg Conservatory. He was the elder brother of Nikolai Rubinstein who founded the Moscow Conservatory.

 

 Piano Concerto No. 1 In E Minor

     

As a pianist, Rubinstein ranks amongst the great 19th-century keyboard virtuosos.

He became most famous for his series of historical recitals—seven enormous, consecutive concerts covering the history of piano music. Rubinstein played this series throughout Russia and Eastern Europe and in the United States when he toured there.

 

Although best remembered as a pianist and educator (most notably in the latter as the composition teacher of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky), Rubinstein was also a prolific composer throughout much of his life. He wrote 20 operas, the best known of which is The Demon. He also composed a large number of other works, including five piano concertos, two cello concertos, a violin concerto, six symphonies and a large number of solo piano works along with a substantial output of works for chamber ensemble. Rubinstein chose to write in an early-Romantic Germanic style and did not exploit the native characteristics of Russian music in his work until relatively late in his career, and in only a handful of compositions, including the 5th Symphony, 2nd Cello Concerto and Caprice Russe for piano and orchestra.

 

 

 

 

Piano Concerto No. 2 in F Major, Op. 35

 

I. Allegro vivace assai 0:00
II. Adagio non troppo 18:33
III. Moderato 28:42

Alexander Paley, piano
State Symphony Orchestra
Igor Golovchin, conductor

 

Piano Concerto No. 3 (1853)

I. Moderato Assai - 00:00
II. Moderato - 11:14
III. Allegro Non Troppo - 17:53

 

The Third Concerto was composed in 1853-1854, given its first performance by Rubinstein himself with the London Philharmonic in 1857, then finally published a year later. Rubinstein relates that he had a dream in which the piano (in a church!) first asks to be accepted as an equal instrument of the orchestra. It is rebuffed by the other instruments, then rudely thrown out of the church. Leaving the psychiatrists to make what they will of this rather odd "programme", the Third Concerto is by far the most innovative of the five concertos; for in it are used cyclic and thematic recall procedures on a large scale. It is perhaps not coincidental that the work's dedication is to Ignaz Moscheies, who was himself an early pioneer in the use of such then revolutionary compositional devices.

 

Although the opening movement can be fitted into a traditional sonata-form mould, Rubinstein intersperses several short solo piano cadenzas near the beginning, and omits both the traditional return to the main theme after the middle development section and the often expected large solo cadenza. Throughout the piano valiantly tries to match and even outdo the orchestra, as in the composer's own "dream".

 

The second movement, after two bars of orchestral introduction, opens with the piano stating a melancholy, obsessively pleading melody. A warmly expressive middle section, now fully dominated by the piano, acts as a contrast before the eventual return of the opening section.

 

The third movement is certainly in the most innovative from a compositional standpoint. Although

cast in loose sonata-form, near the end there are five separate quotations of themes from the earlier movements. The coda makes use as well of modified thematic material from the first two movements. This cyclic recall of themes places Rubinstein's Third Concerto as an important forerunner of what would soon prove to be one of the most popular concerto forms of the 19th century.

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Piano Concerto No. 4 (1864)

 

I. Moderato Assai - 00:00
II. Andante - 11:31
III. Allegro - 22:18

The Fourth Concerto, with its near ideal balance between the piano and orchestra, has proved the most popular of Rubinstein's concertos, and is the one on which the composer lavished the most care. First written in 1864, after two further published versions Rubinstein finally published a last revision in 1872.

 

The first movement opens with an orchestral statement of the main theme, then leads into an explosive opening cadenza for the piano. The piano then restates the main theme, now clothed in massive fortissimo chords which in the hands of the composer must have overpowered any orchestral sound of the day. After progressing in fairly traditional sonata-form, Rubinstein adds a massive piano cadenza (which was undoubtedly an obvious pattern to parts of Tchaikovsky's later first movement cadenza to his concerto in B flat minor), then rounds off the movement by another massive statement of the main theme and a breathless coda.

 

The second movement is primarily in F major, yet starts in D minor as a tonal link to the preceeding movement. The principal theme is first given by the piano, then is eventually returned for two further embellished and modified statements. Overall this movement contains some of Rubinstein's most serene and lovely writing.

 

Although the last movement has a wild, Russian dance-like character, it nonetheless is closer in character to the krakowiak, which is actually a dance of Polish origin. The opening main theme, first presented by the piano, contains imitations of characteristic shouts and stamping of feet, as would be found in a similar Russian folk dance. The 19th-century Russian composer and Rubinstein's contemporary, César Cui, felt this movement to be "something like those wild dances that Gluck and Righini wrote ... somthing like the alla Turca one finds in Mozart". The breathless dance-like pace, occasionally relaxed with more lyrical passages, continues headlong to a frenzied coda that ends the concerto with an avalanche of virtuosity for the piano.

                   Piano Concerto No. 5 (1874)

The Fifth Concerto was composed in 1874. It is by far the most gargantuan of any of Rubinstein's piano and orchestra works, both by virtue of its nearly fifty minutes of music and the extreme physical demands made on the soloist. Significantly, Rubinstein dedicated the Fifth Concerto to Charles Valentin Alkan (real name Morhange), the eccentric French pianist-composer whose own keyboard works often contain similar pianistic extravagances. Rubinstein's writing in the Fifth Concerto has been accused of being at times derivative of both Beethoven and Liszt. Such strong influences were perhaps inevitable for a composer such as Rubinstein, whose style was undeniably influenced both by the German school stemming from Beethoven and Mendelssohn, and by the keyboard wizardry of Liszt.

Conversely, the influence that Rubinstein's compositions and performance style had on such contemporaries as Tchaikovsky, Balakirev, and both the young Busoni and Rachmaninov cannot be ignored. Tchaikovsky, who for the most part was caustic in his opinions of Rubinstein's compositions, in his own First Piano Concerto (which was finished close to a year after Rubinstein's Fifth Concerto) came perilously close to an outright plagiarizing of certain of Rubinstein's pianistic effects.

In the Fifth Concerto, as in his other piano concertos, Rubinstein largely adheres to traditional structure. The opening huge movement is in sonata form, complete with a solo piano cadenza. In the opening principal theme given by the orchestra there is a pentatonic flavour, which to the listener sounds vaguely Oriental. At the close of the movement's exposition section, the series of elephantine, powerful ascending chords played by the piano against the horns of the orchestra must have been a strong stimulus for Tchaikovsky's own famous opening to his First Concerto. Rubinstein's extreme demands for the soloist include extended octave passages and huge chords written expressly for the composer's own mammoth reach, and difficult trills in double notes for both hands.

The dark, sombre second movement is in three-part form, with rhapsodic passages in the piano which punctuate and answer the quiet, folk-like material initially given in the orchestra. After an impassioned solo piano cadenza finally signals the return to the opening material, Rubinstein now reverses the order of themes, then ends the movement with three pizzicatos and a muffled, ominious muttering of the timpani.

The finale is constructed in sonata-rondo form. Like the first movement, it is built on a huge scale, with enormous musical gestures and technical demands for the soloist. Following several statements of a wild, rollicking theme that might be nicknamed "The Hunt", Rubinstein has the piano play an Italian dance tune over a typical Central Italian drone bass of open fifths. (In the manuscript Rubinstein indicates this as a "Tarantella napolitaine populaire".) Considerable glittering technical display for the pianist follows, then a concluding explosion of upward moving interlocking octaves, reminiscent of the close of the first movement of Tchaikovsky's First Concerto, brings this titanic movement to a suitably brilliant conclusion.

 

 

After Rubinstein's death, his works began to lose popularity, although his piano concerti remained

in the repertoire in Europe until the First World War, and his principal works have retained a toehold in the Russian concert repertoire. Over recent years, his work has been performed a little more often both in Russia and abroad, and has often met with positive criticism. Amongst his better known works are the opera The Demon, his Piano Concerto No. 4, and his Symphony No. 2, known as The Ocean.