Piano Concerto No. 1 (Liszt) - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Franz Liszt ; ), was a 19th-century Hungarian composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher.Liszt became renowned in Europe during the nineteenth century for his virtuosic skill as a pianist. He was said by his contemporaries to have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age...

composed his Piano Concerto
Piano concerto
A piano concerto is a concerto written for piano and orchestra.See also harpsichord concerto; some of these works are occasionally played on piano...

No. 1 in E-flat major, S.124 over a 26-year period; the main themes date from 1830, while the final version dates 1849. The concerto consists of four movements

Movement (music)

A movement is a self-contained part of a musical composition or musical form. While individual or selected movements from a composition are sometimes performed separately, a performance of the complete work requires all the movements to be performed in succession...

, which are performed without breaks in between, and lasts approximately 20 minutes. It premiere

Premiere

A premiere is generally "a first performance". This can refer to plays, films, television programs, operas, symphonies, ballets and so on. Premieres for theatrical, musical and other cultural presentations can become extravagant affairs, attracting large numbers of socialites and much media...

d in Weimar

Weimar

Weimar is a city in Germany famous for its cultural heritage. It is located in the federal state of Thuringia , north of the Thüringer Wald, east of Erfurt, and southwest of Halle and Leipzig. Its current population is approximately 65,000. The oldest record of the city dates from the year 899...

on February 17, 1855, with Liszt at the piano and Hector Berlioz

Hector Berlioz

Hector Berlioz was a French Romantic composer, best known for his compositions Symphonie fantastique and Grande messe des morts . Berlioz made significant contributions to the modern orchestra with his Treatise on Instrumentation. He specified huge orchestral forces for some of his works; as a...

conducting.

History

The main themes of Liszt's first piano concerto are written in a sketchbook dated 1830, when Liszt was nineteen years old. He seems to have completed the work in 1849, yet made further adjustments in 1853. It was first performed at Weimar in 1855, with the composer at the piano and Hector Berlioz conducting. Liszt made yet more changes before publication in 1856. Béla Bartók

Béla Bartók

Béla Viktor János Bartók was a Hungarian composer and pianist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century and is regarded, along with Liszt, as Hungary's greatest composer...

wrote of the work as being "the first perfect realisation of cyclic sonata form, with common themes being treated on the variation principle".
The movements of the piano concerto are played without a break.

Form

The concerto consists of four relatively short movements

Movement (music)

Allegro maestoso

The orchestra introduces the main theme of the piece with a powerful motif. The piano then comes in with an octave passage, spanning 4 octaves. It is said that the main theme was set to the words "None of you understand this, HAHA" to deter any criticism from critics who did not like the piece's originality.

A quiet duet is formed between the piano and the clarinet in a quiet and peaceful passage, yet this is soon taken over again by the main theme.
Quasi adagio

The cello and double bass introduce the Adagio section in a serene, unison cantabile, before the rest of the string section joins. Again, however, the cellos and double bass descends before the piano joins, in una corda. The piano uses the string theme and develops them further. The section reaches a climax where a strong fortissimo is played before a descending diminuendo scale is played.

After a slight pause, the whole orchestra joins, again following the same theme, however, a cello plays the theme while the piano answers quickly and hurriedly. This develops into a passage where the woodwind section is playing a new theme while the piano is playing decorations in the upper register. The passage is ended by the piano.
Allegretto vivace - Allegro animato

The triangle starts the movement with a string quartet following it. After, the piano plays the same theme, yet develops it further. This occurs over the whole movement, however, previous themes from the last two movements are re-introduced and combined together to give this concerto its unique form.

The movement is ended in the same way as the first movement started, with a blistering piano passage and ending in a F-minor chord.
Allegro marziale animato

A descending E-flat scale is played before the orchestra plays the slow decorated theme that the woodwind section played in the previous movement, however, brass is used to decorate the melody.

The movement continues bringing all the themes out at different times and combining them.

In the final few passages, a new chromatic theme is introduced where the piano is playing semi-quavers and tripleted quavers at the same time, an exercise in polyrhythm
Polyrhythm
Polyrhythm is the simultaneous sounding of two or more independent rhythms.Polyrhythm in general is a nonspecific term for the simultaneous occurrence of two or more conflicting rhythms, of which cross-rhythm is a specific and definable subset.—Novotney Polyrhythms can be distinguished from...

.

The piece is finished in the bravura style Liszt is so famous for. The importance of the orchestra is further highlighted in the fact that only they play the last few notes rather than both piano and orchestra.

Orchestration

This concerto is scored for a Romantic orchestra and calls for the following:

Solo Piano

Woodwinds

Woodwind instrument

A woodwind instrument is a musical instrument which produces sound when the player blows air against a sharp edge or through a reed, causing the air within its resonator to vibrate...

Piccolo

The piccolo is a half-size flute, and a member of the woodwind family of musical instruments. The piccolo has the same fingerings as its larger sibling, the standard transverse flute, but the sound it produces is an octave higher than written...

2 Flute

Flute

The flute is a musical instrument of the woodwind family. Unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is an aerophone or reedless wind instrument that produces its sound from the flow of air across an opening...

2 Oboe

Oboe

The oboe is a double reed musical instrument of the woodwind family. In English, prior to 1770, the instrument was called "hautbois" , "hoboy", or "French hoboy". The spelling "oboe" was adopted into English ca...

2 Clarinet

Clarinet

The clarinet is a musical instrument of woodwind type. The name derives from adding the suffix -et to the Italian word clarino , as the first clarinets had a strident tone similar to that of a trumpet. The instrument has an approximately cylindrical bore, and uses a single reed...

s in B-flat

2 Bassoon

Bassoon

The bassoon is a woodwind instrument in the double reed family that typically plays music written in the bass and tenor registers, and occasionally higher. Appearing in its modern form in the 19th century, the bassoon figures prominently in orchestral, concert band and chamber music literature...

Brass

Brass instrument

A brass instrument is a musical instrument whose sound is produced by sympathetic vibration of air in a tubular resonator in sympathy with the vibration of the player's lips...

2 Horns

Horn (instrument)

The horn is a brass instrument consisting of about of tubing wrapped into a coil with a flared bell. A musician who plays the horn is called a horn player ....

in F

2 Trumpet

Trumpet

The trumpet is the musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments, dating back to at least 1500 BCE. They are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air...

s in B-flat

3 Trombone

Trombone

The trombone is a musical instrument in the brass family. Like all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player’s vibrating lips cause the air column inside the instrument to vibrate...

s (2 Tenor, 1 Bass)

Percussion

Percussion instrument

A percussion instrument is any object which produces a sound when hit with an implement or when it is shaken, rubbed, scraped, or otherwise acted upon in a way that sets the object into vibration...

Timpani

Timpani, or kettledrums, are musical instruments in the percussion family. A type of drum, they consist of a skin called a head stretched over a large bowl traditionally made of copper. They are played by striking the head with a specialized drum stick called a timpani stick or timpani mallet...

Cymbal

Cymbals are a common percussion instrument. Cymbals consist of thin, normally round plates of various alloys; see cymbal making for a discussion of their manufacture. The greater majority of cymbals are of indefinite pitch, although small disc-shaped cymbals based on ancient designs sound a...

Triangle

Triangle (instrument)

The triangle is an idiophone type of musical instrument in the percussion family. It is a bar of metal, usually steel but sometimes other metals like beryllium copper, bent into a triangle shape. The instrument is usually held by a loop of some form of thread or wire at the top curve...

Strings:

Violin

The violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....

s I, II

Viola

The viola is a bowed string instrument. It is the middle voice of the violin family, between the violin and the cello.- Form :The viola is similar in material and construction to the violin. A full-size viola's body is between and longer than the body of a full-size violin , with an average...

Violoncellos

Double bass

The double bass, also called the string bass, upright bass, standup bass or contrabass, is the largest and lowest-pitched bowed string instrument in the modern symphony orchestra, with strings usually tuned to E1, A1, D2 and G2...

Media

External links

Franz Liszt's Piano Concerto No. 1 Analysis and description of Franz Liszt's Piano Concerto No. 1 in E Flat Major
Piano.ru - Sheet music download (2 piano reduction)

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