Piano concerto

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Piano concerto

A piano concerto is a concerto

Concerto

The term Concerto usually refers to a three-part musical work in which one solo instrument is accompanied by an orchestra. The concerto, as understood in this modern way, arose in the Baroque period side by side with the concerto grosso, which contrasted a small group of instruments with the rest of the orchestra....
written for piano

Piano

The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard instrument. Widely used in Western music for solo performance, ensemble use, chamber music, and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to musical composition and rehearsal....
and orchestra

Orchestra

An orchestra is an Musical ensemble, usually fairly large with string, brass, woodwind sections, and possibly a percussion section as well. The term orchestra derives from the name for the area in front of an theatre of ancient Greece reserved for the Greek chorus....
. See also harpsichord concerto

Harpsichord concerto

A harpsichord concerto is a piece of music for an orchestra with the harpsichord in a solo role Sometimes these works are played on the modern piano; see piano concerto....
; some of these works are occasionally played on piano. Joseph Haydn

Joseph Haydn

Joseph Haydn was an Austrians composer. He was one of the most prominent composers of the classical music era, and is called by some the "Father of the Symphony" and "Father of the String Quartet"....
and Thomas Arne wrote concertos for fortepiano

Fortepiano

Fortepiano designates the early version of the piano, from its invention by the Italian instrument maker Bartolomeo Cristofori around 1700 up to the early 19th century....
or harpsichord, at the period of time when they were in common usage (the late 18th century.)

Classical and Romantic As the piano developed and became accepted, composer

Composer

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Encyclopedia

A piano concerto is a concerto

Concerto

Piano

Orchestra

Harpsichord concerto

Joseph Haydn

Fortepiano

History

Classical and Romantic

As the piano developed and became accepted, composer

Composer

A composer is a person who creates music, usually in the medium of musical notation, for interpretation and performance. The level of distinction between composers and other musicians varies, which affects issues such as copyright and the deference given to individual interpretations of a particular piece of music....
s naturally started writing concerti for it. This happened in the late 18th century, and so corresponded to the Classical music era. The most important composer in the development of the form in these early stages was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Mozart showed prodigious ability from his earliest childhood in Salzburg. Already competent on keyboard and violin, he composed from the age of five and performed before European royalty; at seventeen he was engaged as a court musician in Salzburg, but grew restless and traveled in search of a better position, always...
. Mozart's body of masterly piano concerti put his stamp firmly on the genre well into the Romantic era.

Mozart wrote many of his 27 piano concertos

Mozart piano concertos

The Mozart piano concertos are a set of 27 concertos for piano and orchestra written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart between 1767 and 1791. These works, many of which Mozart composed for himself to play in the Vienna concert series of 1784?86, held a special place for him; indeed, Leopold Mozart apparently interrupted him composing a "harpsichord...
for himself to perform (he also wrote concerti for two and three pianos). With the development of the piano

Pianist

A pianist is a musician who plays the piano. A professional pianist can perform solo pieces, play with an musical ensemble or orchestra, or accompany one or more singers, solo instrumentalists, or other performers....
virtuoso

Virtuoso

A virtuoso is an individual who possesses outstanding technical ability at singing or playing a musical instrument. The plural form is either virtuosi or the Anglicisation, virtuosos, and the feminine form sometimes used is virtuosa....
many composer-pianists did likewise, notably Ludwig van Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. He was a crucial figure in the transitional period between the Classical music era and Romantic music eras in classical music, and remains one of the most acclaimed and influential composers of all time....
, Carl Maria von Weber

Carl Maria von Weber

Carl Maria Friedrich Ernst von Weber was a Germans composer, conducting, pianist, guitarist and critic, one of the first significant composers of the Romanticism school....
, Frédéric Chopin

Frédéric Chopin

Fr?d?ric Chopin was a composer and virtuoso pianist of the Romantic music period. He is widely regarded as the greatest Polish composer, and one of music's greatest tone poets....
, Franz Liszt

Franz Liszt

Franz Liszt was a Kingdom of Hungary composer, virtuoso pianist and teacher.Liszt became renowned throughout Europe for his great skill as a performer during the 19th century....
, Camille Saint-Saëns

Camille Saint-Saëns

Charles-Camille Saint-Sa?ns was a French composer, organist, Conductor , and pianist, known especially for The Carnival of the Animals, Danse Macabre , Samson and Delilah , Havanaise , Introduction and Rondo capriccioso , and his Symphony No....
, Sergei Rachmaninoff

Sergei Rachmaninoff

Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff was a Russian composer, pianist, and conducting. He was one of the finest pianists of his day and, as a composer, the last great representative of Russian late Romantic music in classical music....
and Sergei Prokofiev

Sergei Prokofiev

Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev was a Russian composer who mastered numerous musical genres and came to be admired as one of the greatest composers of the 20th century....
, and also the somewhat lesser-known Johann Nepomuk Hummel

Johann Nepomuk Hummel

Johann Nepomuk Hummel or Jan Nepomuk Hummel was a composer and virtuoso pianist of Austrian origin who was born in Pressburg , but a part of Kingdom of Hungary when he was born....
and John Field

John Field (composer)

John Field was an Irish composer and pianist. He is best known for being the first composer to write nocturnes....
. Many other Romantic

Romantic music

In music, romanticism is a term, often considered misleading, and concept derived from literature traditionally defined by attributes including, "interest in nature, medieval chivalry, mysticism, [and] remoteness [ Social alienation and Solitude]"....
composers wrote pieces in the form, well-known examples including the concerti by Robert Schumann

Robert Schumann

Robert Schumann, sometimes given as Robert Alexander Schumann, was a German composer, aesthete and influential music critic. He is one of the most famous Romantic music composers of the 19th century....
, Edvard Grieg

Edvard Grieg

Edvard Grieg was a Norway composer and pianist who composed in the Romantic period. He is best known for his Piano Concerto , for his incidental music to Henrik Ibsen's Play Peer Gynt , and for his collection of piano miniatures Lyric Pieces....
, Johannes Brahms

Johannes Brahms

Johannes Brahms , composer and pianist, was one of the leading musicians of the Romantic music. Born in Hamburg, Brahms spent much of his professional life in Vienna, Austria, where he was a leader of the musical scene....
, and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky – ) was a Russian composer of the Romantic music era. He wrote some of the most popular concert and theatrical music in the current classical repertoire, including the ballets Swan Lake and Nutcracker, the 1812 Overture, his Piano Concerto No....
. Edward Elgar

Edward Elgar

Sir Edward William Elgar, 1st Baronet, Order of Merit, Royal Victorian Order was an England composer. Several of his first major orchestral works, including the Enigma Variations and the Pomp and Circumstance Marches, were greeted with acclaim....
made sketches for a piano concerto but never completed it.

In the 19th century, Henry Charles Litolff

Henry Charles Litolff

Henry Charles Litolff was a Keyboard instrument virtuoso and composer of Romantic music.Litolff was born in London, the son of a Scotland mother and an Alsace father....
blurred the boundary between a piano concerto and symphony in his five works entitled Concerto Symphonique, and Ferruccio Busoni

Ferruccio Busoni

Ferruccio Dante Michelangiolo Benvenuto Busoni was an Italian composer, pianist, editor, writer, piano and composition teacher, and conducting....
added a male choir in the last movement of his hour-long concerto

Piano Concerto (Busoni)

The Piano concerto in C major by Ferruccio Busoni, Op. 39, is one of the largest works written in this particular genre. The work is in five movements, the last of which also utilizes a male Choir, to a text by Adam Gottlob Oehlenschl?ger....
.

The few well-known piano concerti which dominate today's concert programs and discographies account for only a minority of the repertoire which proliferated on the European music scene during the 19th century.

20th century and contemporary

The piano concerto form survived through the 20th century

20th century classical music

At the turn of the 20th century classical music was characteristically late Romantic music in style, while at the same time the Impressionist music movement, spearheaded by Claude Debussy was taking form....
into the 21st

Contemporary classical music

Contemporary classical music can be understood as belonging to a period that started in the mid-1970s with the retreat of modernism . However, the term may also be employed in a broader sense to refer to the post-1945 Modernism of post-tonal music from the death of Anton Webern ...
, with examples being written by Arnold Schoenberg

Arnold Schoenberg

Arnold Schoenberg was an Austrian and later American composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School....
, Béla Bartók

Béla Bartók

B?la Viktor J?nos Bart?k was a Hungarian people composer and pianist, considered to be one of the greatest composers of the 20th century. Through his collection and analytical study of folk music, he was one of the founders of ethnomusicology....
, Igor Stravinsky

Igor Stravinsky

Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky was a Russian-born composer, considered by many to be the most influential composer of 20th century music. He was a quintessentially Cosmopolitanism Russian who was named by Time as one of the 100 most influential people of the century....
, Sergei Prokofiev

Sergei Prokofiev

Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev was a Russian composer who mastered numerous musical genres and came to be admired as one of the greatest composers of the 20th century....
, George Gershwin

George Gershwin

George Gershwin was an American composer and pianist. He wrote most of his vocal and theatrical works in collaboration with his elder brother, lyricist Ira Gershwin....
, Michael Tippett

Michael Tippett

Sir Michael Kemp Tippett Order of Merit Order of the Companions of Honour Order of the British Empire was one of the foremost English composers of the 20th century....
, Dmitri Shostakovich

Dmitri Shostakovich

Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich was a List of Russian composers of the Soviet Union period.After a period influenced by Sergei Prokofiev and Igor Stravinsky , Shostakovich developed a hybrid of styles as exemplified in his opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District ....
, Samuel Barber

Samuel Barber

Samuel Osborne Barber II was an American composer of orchestral, opera, choral, and piano music. His Adagio for Strings is among his most popular compositions and widely considered a masterpiece of modern classical music....
, Witold Lutoslawski

Witold Lutoslawski

Witold Lutoslawski was one of the major European composers of the 20th century, and one of the pre-eminent Poland musicians during his last three decades....
, György Ligeti

György Ligeti

Gy?rgy S?ndor Ligeti was a composer, born in a Hungarian History of the Jews in Romania family in Transylvania, Romania. He briefly lived in Hungary before later becoming an Austrian citizen....
, Elliott Carter

Elliott Carter

Elliott Cook Carter, Jr. is a two-time Pulitzer Prize for Music-winning American composer born and living in New York City. He studied with Nadia Boulanger in Paris in the 1930s, and then returned to the United States....
, and others. Several 20th century examples also exist of concertos (or concertante works) written for two pianos and orchestra, such as those of Francis Poulenc

Francis Poulenc

Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc was a France composer and a member of the French group Les Six. He composed music in all major genres, including art song, chamber music, oratorio, opera, ballet music, and orchestral music....
(1932) and Bohuslav Martinu

Bohuslav Martinu

Bohuslav Martinu He became a violinist in the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, and taught music in his home town. In 1923 Martinu left Czechoslovakia for Paris, and deliberately withdrew from the Romantic style in which he had been trained....
(1943).

In parts of other 20th century symphonic works the piano is given occasional prominence like any other instrument of the orchestra, as in the Symphony in Three Movements
Symphony in Three Movements

Symphony in Three Movements is a ballet made by New York City Ballet co-founder and balletmaster George Balanchine for opening night of its New York City Ballet Stravinsky Festival to the Igor Stravinsky eponymous symphony from 1942?45, and lighting by Mark Stanley ....
by Igor Stravinsky

Igor Stravinsky

Michael Tippett

Sir Michael Kemp Tippett Order of Merit Order of the Companions of Honour Order of the British Empire was one of the foremost English composers of the 20th century....
.

There are examples of piano concerti written to commissions by pianists. Paul Wittgenstein

Paul Wittgenstein

Paul Wittgenstein was an Austrian-born concert pianist, who became known for his ability to play with just his left hand, after he lost his right arm during the World War I....
, who lost his right arm during World War I

World War I

World War I, or the First World War , was a global military conflict which involved the Great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies of World War I and the Central Powers....
, on resuming his musical career asked a number of composers to write pieces for him which required the pianist to use his left hand only. The results of these commissions include concertante pieces for orchestra and piano left hand by Benjamin Britten

Benjamin Britten

Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten, Order of Merit Order of the Companions of Honour was an England composer, conducting, viola and pianist....
, Franz Schmidt

Franz Schmidt

Franz Schmidt was an Austrian composer, cellist and pianist....
, Maurice Ravel

Maurice Ravel

Joseph-Maurice Ravel was a French composer and pianist of Impressionist music known especially for the subtlety, richness, and poignancy of his melodies, orchestral and instrumental Texture and effects....
, Paul Hindemith

Paul Hindemith

Paul Hindemith was a German composer, violist, violinist, teacher, music theorist and Conducting....
, Sergei Prokofiev

Sergei Prokofiev

Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev was a Russian composer who mastered numerous musical genres and came to be admired as one of the greatest composers of the 20th century....
(his Piano Concerto No. 4), Richard Strauss

Richard Strauss

Richard Georg Strauss was a German composer of the late Romantic music and early modern eras, particularly of operas, Lieder and tone poems. Strauss was also a prominent Conducting....
, and Erich Wolfgang Korngold

Erich Wolfgang Korngold

Erich Wolfgang Korngold was an Academy Award-winning 20th century film and romantic music composer....
.

Characteristics

Form

A classical piano concerto is often in three movements.

A quick opening movement in sonata form
Sonata form

Sonata form is a musical form that has been used widely since the early Classical music era. While it is typically used in the first Movement of multimovement pieces, it is sometimes employed in subsequent movements as well....
including a cadenza
Cadenza

In music, a cadenza is, generically, an improvised or written-out ornamental passage played or sung by a solo or soloists, usually in a "free" rhythmic style, and often allowing for virtuosic display....
(which may be improvised
Improvisation

Improvisation is the practice of acting, singing, talking and reacting, of making and creating, in the moment and in response to the stimulus of one's immediate environment and inner feelings....
by the soloist).
A slow expressive movement
A faster rondo
Rondo

Rondo, and its French language equivalent rondeau, is a word that has been used in music in a number of ways, most often in reference to a musical form, but also in reference to a character-type that is distinct from the form....

Examples by Mozart and Beethoven follow this model, but there are many others which do not. Beethoven's fourth concerto includes a last-movement cadenza, and many composers have introduced innovations - for example Liszt's single-movement concerti.

External links

(a commercial website selling recordings on CD)
An analysis of Rachmaninoff's Works for Piano and Orchestra including the Piano Concertos and the Paganini Rhapsody.
, an extensive list of Classical and Romantic piano concertos, and other music for piano and orchestra from the same period.
, An exhaustive list of recorded works for piano and orchestra.