Piano Concerto, Op.13

Written for the Henry Wood Promenade Concerts in 1938, by a highly talented and impressionable young musician, Britten’s Piano Concerto is a brilliant reflection of the sounds and styles which were most interesting and most attractive to a progressive ear at the time. He was too original a composer to leave it at that that of course, although, he said, there is nothing more ambitious behind it than “the idea of exploiting the various important characteristics of the piano, such as its enormous compass, its percussive quality, and its suitability for figuration. . . . It is not by any means a symphony with piano, but rather a bravura concerto with orchestral accompaniment.”

Even so, and though it is obviously influenced by the spirit and polish of Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G major, the first movement (one of Britten’s longest purely instrumental constructions) has its own structural conscience. Beginning in a burst of percussive energy, in the authentic toccata manner, the pianist introduces the first subject in D major in even quavers irregularly accented. Before the second solo entry, there is a brief but striking and (as it later turns out) important alternation of two chords fortissimo on brass and timpani. Unlike Ravel, who slows down the tempo for his second subject, Britten contrives to sustain the momentum, in repeated quavers on the horns, while his new lyrical melody steals quietly in on the strings. The development is something of a conflict between the two main themes each one represented by its own protagnoist, the piano keeping up its characteristic toccata activity, while the orchestra occupies itself with variants on the second subject. The recapitulation begins as a compromise - the first subject quietly reappearing on the piano, the second subject sustained below it on the strings. But the cadenza, which is a virtuoso improvisation on the alternating brass chords, clears the air, and the second subject emerges serene and radiant on the piano with its own accompaniment of gently repeated quavers and with D major harmonies on the strings.

It seems at first as though the second movement might also develop into a conflict between piano and orchestra. On the one hand, there is the faintly ironic waltz tune, introduced by solo viola; on the other hand, with the first entry of the piano, there is an alternation of two chords - which quite changes the atmosphere, but only momentarily. The piano joins in the waltz, and in the middle section (which is based on the two chords) orchestra and piano collaborate. The soloist has some doubts about the fairground vigour with which the orchestra resumes the waltz, but again the difference of opinion is temporary.

When Britten’s Piano Concerto was first performed - with the composer as soloist and Sir Henry Wood conducting in the Albert Hall in 1938 - the third movement was a Recitative and Aria. Britten was obviously not happy with it, for he later withdrew that movement and in the 1945 revision substituted the present Impromptu. It is constructed in one of his favourite forms, the passacaglia - which is to say that it is based on one theme which recurs throughout the movement. After the first statement of the theme with its false relations and curiously Franck-like chromatic harmonies, there are seven variations, with a brief piano cadenza before each of them. In the fourth the piano superimposes brisk musical-box figuration against the theme on harp and violas, and in the fifth the theme is merely outlined by the double basses under an accelerating canon between the left and right hands of the pianist. The cadenza between the sixth and seventh variations echoes the two alternating chords. The seventh, which bears some harmonic and rhythmic evidence of the time Britten spent in America at the beginning of the War, acts as both recapitulation and transition to the finale.

With the March, which follows without a break, we are back in 1938, in the reflected glory of a martial triumph by Prokofiev, say, or Shostakovich. It is actually the accompaniment to the march which is heard first, beginning in the distance and coming nearer in a crescendo and through indeterminate harmonies to plain A major - at which point the piano cheerfully presents the actual tune of the march. There is a quiet episode, beginning in the lower strings and based on the two alternating chords, but for the most part the march character predominates: this must be the only piano concerto with a cadenza in strict march time, accompanied by cymbals and bass drum. The only problem is to get the main theme out of A major into D major, which happens briefly but very definitely at the fff climax of the movement, just before the quicker coda.