Concerto for piano and wind instruments

Concerto

for piano and wind instruments

Largo - allegro - largo

Largo - più mosso - tempo primo -

Allegro - agitato - lento

“I am running away from romanticism,”said Stravinsky in 1924 in explanation of the sound and style of the Concerto for Piano and Wind and other works he wrote round that time. Certainly, the Concerto is very different from the great popular favourites of its kind - by Tchaikovsky, say, or Grieg, or Rachmaninov - and has more in common with the keyboard concertos of J.S. Bach and his baroque contemporaries. The sound of piano and wind he liked because, he said, it is “dry, cold and transparent like an ‘extra dry’ champagne, which gives no sensation of sweetness.” To avoid that sweetness he excluded not only the strings (except for double basses) but also romantic melody and the voluptuous harmonies and textures that go with it. The Concerto for Piano and Wind is abundant in tunes and textural interest but they are of a different order from those of the romantic concerto.

The one romantic element in the first movement is the funereal tone associated with the slow-march rhythms and solemn sound of the brass in the Largo introduction. Its purpose is not, however, to initiate a lament but to offset the brilliant first entry of the piano as the tempo changes to Allegro and the mood to one of mischievously ironic hilarity. The piano articulation is drily percussive and remains so more or less throughout. The wind sound is similarly hard-edged but less consistently: a more melodious idea first heard on flute is occasionally presented as a counterpoint to the continuing toccata activity in the solo part. There are two short and rhythmically erratic piano cadenzas before the tempo slows down for a grandiose recall of the Largo material from the introduction, now in a rather less solemn mood.

The following Largo is Stravinsky’s equivalent to the slow movement in a Bach concerto except that, to start with, the expressive quality of the melodic line on the piano is contradicted by its curiously heavy-handed accompaniment. The same sort of thing happens when the melody is taken up two trumpets and emphatically trodden on by lower brass, timpani and the piano itself. But then, at the top of a crescendo, brass and percussion aggression is abruptly silenced to reveal poignant solo woodwind lines and a newly sensitive piano. From this point on Stravinsky is less inclined to choke his lyrical impulse. Two piano cadenzas, initially supported by gruff trombone and timpani, intrude on the prevailing calm but both of them eventually acquiesce, the second of them to make way for the opening melody in the expressive colours denied it at the beginning of the movement.

The Allegro which follows without a break restores the mood and some of the material of the Allegro section of the first movement. A highly entertaining succession of tuneful ideas, it includes a march theme for trumpets, a jazzily syncopated episode for piano, and a fugue for brass and woodwind as the piano continues its characteristic toccata figuration. A sudden change of tempo recalls the Largo introduction to the first movement, its funereal tones this time apparently leading to a lament for wind - but only until a brief but decisive reversion to toccata frenzy dismisses such a romantic notion as ridiculous.

While he was writing the Concerto for Piano and Wind, at Biarritz between 1923 and 1924, Stravinsky was not thinking of himself as soloist. But on the suggestion of Serge Koussevitsky, who was to conduct the first performance in Paris in May 1924, he decided he would play it and, after much practice and some coaching, he did it so well that he was called upon to perform it no fewer than fifty times during the next five years.

Gerald Larner©2002