Piano Concerto No. 2 (Hummel)

Johann Nepomuk Hummel's Piano Concerto No. 2 in A minor, Op. 85 was written in 1816 and published in Vienna in 1821.[1] Unlike his earlier piano concerti, which closely followed the model of Mozart's, the A minor concerto, like the B minor Concerto, Op. 89, is written in a proto-Romantic style that anticipates the later stylistic developments of composers such as Frédéric Chopin and Felix Mendelssohn.[2]

Date of composition and scoring

The piano concerto was written by Hummel as a showcase for his virtuosity at the instrument. It was written in 1816 and is scored for piano, flute, two oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, and strings.

Movements

The work is composed in traditional three movement form. There is a solo transition in the second movement leading into the Rondo without pause.

Influence

Although Hummel's music, seen as essentially Mozartian in style, had fallen out of fashion by the 1830s, the A minor concerto nonetheless exercised considerable influence over a number of works that helped to usher in the Romantic style. Frédéric Chopin, who had played the Hummel concerti, drew from elements of the A minor concerto in his own piano concerti.[3] Indeed, it has been suggested that Chopin's concerto is closely linked both thematically and structurally to the Hummel antecedent.[4]

The A minor concerto da camera of Charles-Valentin Alkan has also been noted for its debt to Hummel's style of writing for the keyboard.[5]

While generally uninterested in Hummel as a composer,[6] Robert Schumann had made a close study of the A minor concerto in 1828[7] and considered it one of the works (along with the F-sharp minor piano sonata) of his "heyday".[8] And in his own A minor concerto, Schumann makes reference to aspects of Hummel's virtuosic style.[9]

Notes
  1. Mikio Tao, Works Catalogue of Hummel, (pdf)
  2. MF Humphries, The Piano Concertos of Johann Nepomuk Hummel Dissertation (Northwestern University, 1957)
  3. Chopin: The Piano Concertos, John Rink, Cambridge University Press, 1997, ISBN 0521446600, pp. 59 & 65.
  4. Ref to dig up (unpubl. diss.)
  5. Structural Novelty and Tradition in the Early Romantic Piano Concerto, p.116 ISBN 1576470008
  6. Mark Kroll, Johann Nepomuk Hummel: A Musician's Life and World, Rowman & Littlefield, 2007, ISBN 0810859203, pp. 275-78
  7. Schumann, Hummel, and "The Clarity of a Well-Planned Composition", Eric Frederick Jensen, Studia Musicologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, T. 40, Fasc. 1/3 (1999), pp. 59- 70
  8. NZfM, 1840, Schumann, "Concertstücke und Concerte für Pianoforte" p. 39 "...ein Werk aus seiner Blüthenzeit, der das A-moll-Konzert..."
  9. Macdonald, Claudia. "Schumann's earliest compositions and performances." Journal of Musicological Research 7.2-3 (1987): 259-283, PAGE NUMBER & DOI MISSING
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References
  • M.F. Humphries, The Piano Concertos of Johann Nepomuk Hummel, PhD Dissertation (Northwestern University, 1957)
  • B.H. Kim, Johann Nepomuk Hummel and His Contribution to Piano Music and the Art of Playing the Piano (University of Rochester, 1967)
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