William Sterndale Bennett - Piano Concerto No. 4, Op. 19 (1838)

Sir William Sterndale Bennett (13 April 1816 – 1 February 1875) was an English composer, pianist, conductor and music educator. At the age of ten Bennett was admitted to the London Royal Academy of Music (RAM), where he remained for ten years. By the age of twenty, he had begun to make a reputation as a concert pianist, and his compositions received high praise. Among those impressed by Bennett was the German composer Felix Mendelssohn, who invited him to Leipzig. There Bennett became friendly with Robert Schumann, who shared Mendelssohn's admiration for his compositions. Bennett spent three winters composing and performing in Leipzig.

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Piano Concerto No. 4 in F minor, Op. 19 (c. 1838)
Dedicated: Ignaz Moscheles (1794-1870)

1. Allegro con maesta (0:00)
2. Barcarole. Andante cantabile e con moto (12:36)
3. Presto. Agitato (21:10)

Malcolm Binns, piano and the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Nicholas Braithwaite

First Performance: 1839-01-17 — Leipzig, Gewandhaus: Bennett (piano), Felix Mendelssohn (conductor)

After Bennett's first visit to Germany there followed three extended visits to work in Leipzig. He was there from October 1836 to June 1837, during which time he made his debut at the Gewandhaus as the soloist in his Third Piano Concerto with Mendelssohn conducting. He later conducted his Naiads overture. During this visit he also arranged the first cricket match ever played in Germany, ("as fitting a Yorkshireman" as the musicologist Percy M. Young comments). At this time Bennett wrote to Davison:

[Mendelssohn] took me to his house and gave me the printed score of [his overture] 'Melusina', and afterwards we supped at the 'Hôtel de Bavière', where all the musical clique feed ... The party consist[ed] of Mendelssohn, [Ferdinand] David, Stamity [sic] ... and a Mr. Schumann, a musical editor, who expected to see me a fat man with large black whiskers.

Bennett had been at first slightly in awe of Mendelssohn, but no such formality ever attached to Bennett's friendship with Robert Schumann, with whom he went on long country walks by day and visited the local taverns by night. Each dedicated a large-scale piano work to the other: in August 1837 Schumann dedicated his Symphonic Studies to Bennett, who reciprocated the dedication a few weeks later with his Fantasie, Op. 16. Schumann was eloquently enthusiastic about Bennett's music; in 1837 he devoted an essay to Bennett in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, praising amongst other works Bennett's Op. 10 Musical Sketches for piano, "three of Bennett's loveliest pictures". The essay ends: "For some time now he has been peering over my shoulder, and for the second time he has asked 'But what are you writing?' Dear friend, I shall write no more than: 'If only you knew!'" Bennett however had from the outset some reservations about Schumann's music, which, he told Davison in 1837, he thought "rather too eccentric".

On Bennett's return to London he took up a teaching post at the RAM which he held until 1858.[3] During his second long stay in Germany, from October 1838 to March 1839, he played his Fourth Piano Concerto (Op. 19, in F minor) and the Wood Nymphs Overture, Op. 20.