Allegro de concert in A major Op.46 (1832-41)

The work Chopin would have chosen to play first in an independent Poland was not the Polonaise in F sharp minor but the Allegro de concert. At least, that is what he told his Silesian friend Aleksander Hoffman when he sent him a copy of the Allegro de concert – “to the Silesian craftsman from the street musician” – and there is no reason to doubt his word. Equally, there is no obvious reason for understanding it.

Although the Allegro de concert was completed and published as a solo piece in 1841, Chopin referred to it in a letter to Fontana as a “my concerto” and it certainly has more in common with a concerto movement, with fairly clear distinctions between solo and tutti passages, than with any kind of expression of national pride. It is true that the first subject, introduced by the “soloist” after an “orchestral” introduction does have a Polish feel to it and that, among more conventional virtuoso passages, the work does boast some heroic gestures here and there. Even so, speculations that it is, at least in part, a reworking of discarded concerto material originating seven years earlier, when Chopin is though to have had two such projects in mind, are probably not far off the mark.