Buchbinder at Eighty: Haydn, Beethoven, Schumann

About the Work

Haydn wrote a number of keyboard concertos (some of the works once published under his name are now thought to be by others), and most of them are heard only occasionally today. The Concerto in D major, Hob. XVIII:11, is the exception. It was his last keyboard concerto, composed in the early 1780s and published in 1784, and it became the most popular of the set, both in his lifetime and since. Today it is, for most listeners, simply “the Haydn piano concerto”.

It was written for harpsichord or fortepiano, a sign of a period when the two instruments shared the same repertoire and a publisher wanted to sell to owners of either. The writing, though, points forward. The solo part is full of quick repeated notes, crisp articulation and contrasts of loud and soft that suit the newer, touch-sensitive piano, and that is the instrument on which it is usually played now. The orchestra is small: two oboes, two horns and strings. There are no flutes, no clarinets and no trumpets or drums, so the colour comes from the bright D major string sound, the reedy oboes and the horns holding long notes underneath.

Writers on the concerto often compare it with Mozart. It is closer in manner to the piano concertos Mozart was writing in the same years than to Haydn’s own earlier keyboard concertos. Whether Haydn was consciously learning from the younger composer is hard to prove, but the resemblance is there in the way soloist and orchestra trade material as partners rather than taking turns.

Tonight the work has a particular resonance. Rudolf Buchbinder made his early name with recordings of Haydn’s complete piano sonatas and other keyboard works, and here he directs the orchestra from the piano.

What to Listen For

I. Vivace. The orchestra opens with a bright, clipped theme built from short repeated notes. When the piano enters it takes up the same idea, and the whole movement grows out of that opening figure, passed between the soloist and different sections of the orchestra. Listen for the way the piano sometimes leads and sometimes decorates what the strings are playing, and for the cadenza near the end, the moment the orchestra falls silent and the soloist improvises (or seems to) on the movement’s themes.

II. Un poco adagio. The slow movement moves to A major and slows the pace right down. The strings introduce a lyrical melody, and the piano answers by ornamenting it: trills, turns and running figures that spin out a single, song-like idea rather than introduce new ones. It is laid out in three parts, the opening music returning after a contrasting middle section.

III. Rondo all’Ungarese: Allegro assai. This is the movement that made the concerto famous. The piano launches a quick, stamping tune, the orchestra answers, and the ball is thrown back and forth at speed. “All’Ungarese” means “in the Hungarian style”, and Haydn signals it with offbeat accents, snapping rhythms and a switch into the minor for the first episode. The main tune keeps coming back between the episodes, each time with fresh energy, and the movement ends abruptly, with a flick rather than a flourish.

About the Work

Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto sits on a threshold. Sketched from about 1800 and first played in 1803, it is the work in which his concertos stop sounding like brilliant continuations of Mozart and start sounding like Beethoven. It is in C minor, and its outer movements are stormy and restless.

The debt to Mozart is still audible, and seems deliberate. Mozart had written his own C minor piano concerto, K. 491, and Beethoven’s concerto shows a keen awareness of it. Both works open quietly in the strings with a rising theme, and both let the storm gather before the soloist arrives. Where Mozart’s darkness stays veiled, Beethoven’s piano enters with forceful rising scales, as if pushing the door open.

The premiere, on 5 April 1803 in Vienna, was one of the long benefit concerts Beethoven organised for himself. The same programme also brought the first performances of his Second Symphony and his oratorio Christ on the Mount of Olives. Beethoven was the soloist, and the solo part was not finished. Ignaz von Seyfried, who turned pages for him that evening, later recalled seeing “almost nothing but empty pages”, with a few scribbles he described as Egyptian hieroglyphs to serve as clues. Beethoven played most of it from memory, nodding to Seyfried each time a page needed turning, and was greatly amused afterwards by his page-turner’s anxiety. The written-out solo part came later, and the concerto was published in 1804.

For all its drama, the concerto is also a work of great tenderness. Its slow movement is set in E major, a key so far from C minor that the first entry of the piano sounds like a door opening onto another room.

Rudolf Buchbinder has recorded all five Beethoven concertos more than once, including with the Vienna Philharmonic.

What to Listen For

I. Allegro con brio. A long orchestral introduction lays out the main themes: a quiet, marching C minor figure in the strings, answered by the winds, and a gentler second theme that arrives in the major. When the piano finally enters, it does so with a flurry of rising scales, and from then on soloist and orchestra argue over the same material. Keep an ear on the short rhythmic motif of the opening theme; Beethoven hammers it home throughout. After the cadenza, instead of the expected orchestral full stop, the piano prolongs its final trill and keeps going with rippling arpeggios before the orchestra returns and the movement closes resolutely in C minor.

II. Largo. The piano opens alone in E major, playing a slow, hymn-like melody with detailed pedal markings that let the chords blur and resonate. The orchestra, with muted strings, answers in the same hushed tone, and as the movement unfolds the piano’s arpeggios curl around the melody when the orchestra takes it up.

III. Rondo: Allegro. The piano sets off alone with an agitated, off-balance tune back in C minor, and the orchestra takes it up with force. The rondo alternates this theme with contrasting episodes, some full of humour, others blunt and dramatic. At the very end the music shakes off the minor key: a quick coda, marked Presto, turns the main theme into a cheerful C major romp.

About the Work

Schumann’s Piano Concerto began life as something else. In May 1841, in the first year of his marriage to Clara Wieck, he wrote a single-movement Fantasy in A minor for piano and orchestra. Clara, one of the great pianists of the age, tried it out with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra that August, but no publisher wanted a one-movement piece of that kind and it went into a drawer. Four years later, in the summer of 1845, Schumann revised the Fantasy and added two more movements, an Intermezzo and a finale. Clara was the soloist at the premiere of the full concerto in Dresden on 4 December 1845, with Ferdinand Hiller, the work’s dedicatee, conducting. It was performed in Leipzig on New Year’s Day 1846, and it has been one of the most loved concertos in the repertoire ever since.

Schumann had made several attempts at a piano concerto in his twenties and abandoned them all. He was wary of the kind of concerto then in fashion, written mainly as a vehicle for a travelling virtuoso’s fireworks. What he produced instead is a conversation. The piano has a demanding part, including a large cadenza, but it often accompanies the orchestra rather than dominating it, supporting a clarinet or oboe solo, or weaving figuration around a melody in the strings. Early reviewers noticed this, some praising the independent and colourful orchestral writing and others remarking that the piano sometimes seemed to recede into the background.

The music is also, unmistakably, about Clara. The wistful oboe melody that dominates the first movement begins with the notes C, B, A, A. In German notation B natural is written H, so the notes can spell C-H-A-A, a shortened form of “Chiara”, the Italian version of Clara’s name that Schumann used for her in his writings. Whether he meant it as a cipher is debated, but the theme returns in so many guises, tender, urgent, dreamy and finally triumphant, that it is hard not to hear it as a portrait.

What to Listen For

I. Allegro affettuoso. The concerto opens with a single sharp stroke from the orchestra, and the piano answers with a cascade of loud chords tumbling downward. Then the mood switches at once: the oboe sings the gentle main theme, and the piano repeats it. Almost everything in the movement grows from that melody. Listen for it speeded up and agitated, for a slow, dreamy version in a distant key in the middle of the movement, and for the passages where a solo clarinet takes the lead and the piano becomes its accompanist. The large written-out cadenza near the end is followed by a fast coda built, once again, on the main theme.

II. Intermezzo: Andantino grazioso. A short, intimate movement in F major. The piano and strings exchange a delicate little figure, almost a dialogue of polite remarks, and in the middle section the cellos take over with a broad, warm melody while the piano accompanies. At the end, the winds recall the first movement’s main theme, and without a break the music slides straight into the finale.

III. Allegro vivace. The finale bursts in, in a bright A major, with a vigorous, waltz-like theme. Schumann plays tricks with the rhythm here: in places the music seems to switch into slower, broader beats that cut across the written time, and a good performance lets you feel the ground shift. The movement is long and exuberant, and it builds to an extended coda that ends in unambiguous celebration.