Xaver Scharwenka - Piano Concerto No. 3 in C sharp minor

Composer: Franz Xaver Scharwenka (6 January 1850 -- 8 December 1924)
Orchestra: Estonian National Symphony Orchestra
Conductor: Neeme Järvi
Soloist: Alexander Markovich
Year of recording: 2014

Concerto for piano & orchestra No. 3 in C sharp minor, Op. 80, written in 1889.

00:00 - I. Maestoso
14:12 - II. Adagio
20:55 - III. Allegro non troppo

All of Scharwenka’s concertos are in minor keys. The Third Piano Concerto, which followed the Second in 1889, after a substantial gap, is in the least common key of the four, C sharp minor. It opens with impressively powerful music reflective of this key signature, but in its highly romantic way it also introduces delicate and lyrical passages.

The opening Maestoso might be said to reflect this tonality (did Scharwenka perhaps have Rachmaninoff ’s Prelude in mind?) and its stentorian tone is mightily impressive. Yet the theme is cast as a mazurka in all but name, though with the Polish dance element completely removed. Scharwenka is now in a high-romantic mood, alternating strong passages with delicate and lyrical ones. The last of these, a winsome melody introduced by flutes and clarinets, answered by the piano, and given full form by violins and cellos in octaves, molto espressivo, also features in the central piano Cadenza.
The second movement, another Adagio, opens with a cantabile melody in the strings, and the piano’s response indicates that Chopin has been left behind in favour of something more full-bodied. For its second major entry, the piano revisits the winsome theme from the first movement, before joining with the orchestra in developing the main idea. But the music of the first movement cannot be restrained. Not only does the now less-than-winsome theme reappear, but the opening theme of the concerto comes to the fore: Liszt’s cyclic thematicism is back.
Without a break – the music pressesforward like a through-composed song – the finale emerges, the opening theme of the first movement recast anew as a mazurka (French horn), but this time more evidently so. What starts as a dainty dance soon receives fuller treatment by the piano, but at heart the movement is a lyrical outpouring rather than a rumbustious dance. A second major episode for the solo piano (neither of them is called a cadenza) recalls the first. The closing bars come full circle to the concerto’s opening material and tone.

The concerto is dedicated: "Rafael Joseffy freundschaftlich zugeeignet", a Hungarian pianist, teacher and composer.