Johann Franz Xaver Sterkel; Piano Concerto No.6 in C, Op. 40, StWV 153 (1804)

Johann Franz Xaver Sterkel (1750-1817) was a German composer. Beethoven and Schubert both cited him as an influence.

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_...
IMSLP: https://imslp.org/wiki/Category:Sterk...

Movements:
0:00 - I. Allegro.
21:25 - II. Romanza. Larghetto.
29:32 - III. Tema con Variazione. Andante.

He composed 6 concertos that I know of, this being the last of them, and the only one written explicitly for the piano. The other five are titled "Keyboard Concerto", intended to be played on either the harpsichord or piano. As such they feature a smaller orchestra and shorter run-times, to accommodate the instrument. This is a long one, the longest I've featured on this channel by far. (I was working on an even longer one, by Leon Kreutzer, but someone else beat me to it - that one runs over an hour in length.)

He wrote 6 concertos of which I am aware. The first two are real recordings (not mine), the rest are my own transcriptions:
#1: Concerto in C, Op.20:    • Johann Franz Xaver Sterkel (1750-1817) - P...  
#2: Concerto in D, Op.26 No.1:    • Johann Franz Xaver Sterkel: Piano Concerto...  
#3: Concerto in F, Op.26 No.2:    • Johann Franz Xaver Sterkel; Piano Concerto...  
#4: Concerto in C, Op.26 No.3:    • Johann Franz Xaver Sterkel; Piano Concerto...  
#5: Concerto in Bb, Op.31:    • Johann Franz Xaver Sterkel; Piano Concerto...  
#6: Concerto in C, Op.40: You're listening to it.

There's also one in the works by Charles Zulehner, who was a student of Sterkel's, which I started before this one, but I figured I'd do the teacher before the student.

To those reading along, it can be a bit hard to follow during the orchestra parts, as not all of the motifs are represented in the piano score. I kept the pagination pretty close to the original since it was already in landscape format (exception being the 3rd movement, where I moved things around to keep the variations separate), so the pages are somewhat long.

As usual, the cadenza in the first movement is my own work, though I kept if very short this time. It could be argued that a piece as long as this deserves a longer cadenza to go with it, but I just felt like this was already too long, and didn't want to overstay my welcome.

There were some challenges in transcribing this one, mostly due to the expressive piano solos in the second movement and the 7th variation in the third, which play fast and loose with the number of notes you can fit in a measure. Almost none of the measures in the 7th variation are the length they're supposed to be. Not so much a problem for a human performer, but that's exactly the kind of thing that computers hate, so I had to do a lot of fancy tempo tricks to force this piece into an orderly shape - to square the Sterkel if you will. I'm mostly satisfied with it, but some of those runs are a little awkward. MuseScore in its latest update has also started doing some annoying things with dynamics, making some of the grace notes on the piano sound louder than they should. Pretty sure this is a bug that needs to be fixed. I've corrected to the best of my ability, but there's still a few that might sound a bit off.

Disclaimer: Yes, it's synthesized. Obviously real musicians with real instruments would be vastly superior, but this simulated performance is better than nothing at all, which is what existed previously. My greatest wish is that these videos will inspire someone with the means to arrange a real performance and hopefully record and publish it so we can hear them in their full glory. If that someone is you, or you know of an existing recording of this, please let me know and I may add a link to this description.