Moritz Moszkowski: Piano Concerto in B minor & Adolf Schulz-Evler: Russian Rhapsody – Ludmil Angelov

When Hyperion launched the Romantic Piano Concerto series in 1991, the two works chosen for the first volume were the piano concertos by Moszkowski and Paderewski. A quarter of a century later, Paderewski’s concerto remains unique to his output—but not Moszkowski’s. No longer can one refer to ‘the Moszkowski concerto’ because in 2008 another, earlier, piano concerto by him was unearthed. That he had written such a work was known to a few, but the score had vanished off the face of the earth.

Bojan Assenov, a thirty-something pianist and composer from Berlin, wrote a musicological dissertation on Moritz Moszkowski which included a catalogue of his works. His research led him to the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris where he discovered not only the lost concerto and Moszkowski’s diary from those days (the 1870s) but other unpublished works Moszkowski had written during his time as a student at the Neue Akademie der Tonkunst in Berlin. These included a piano quintet, an overture and a symphony in D minor. The scores appear to have been taken by Moszkowski with him to Paris when he moved from Berlin in 1897.

On the online piano site Pianophilia, there was a thread about Moszkowski where devotees of the composer tracked down and made available long out-of-print scores. Here, having published his dissertation early in 2009, Assenov posted a link to his thesis. This led to a friend of the pianist Ludmil Angelov visiting the Bibliothèque nationale de France and photographing the entire manuscript of the B minor concerto. Angelov showed the results to the conductor Vladimir Kiradjiev who thought it too good a work to respect the composer’s wish not to publish it. A digital score was created from the manuscript, and was eventually issued by the French publishers Symétrie in 2013.

The impetus for the concerto’s creation was to launch the young Moszkowski’s pianistic career. Finishing the work in December 1874 (Tchaikovsky was completing his celebrated B flat minor concerto at exactly the same time), Moszkowski and his friend Philipp Scharwenka (a fellow student and brother of the more famous Xaver) began planning a joint concert of their new works to be performed at the Berliner Singakademie on 13 February 1875. It was nothing if not ambitious, for also on the programme was Moszkowski’s symphony in D minor. The hall was rented and tickets had been sold when the two composers learnt that the great Anton Rubinstein—then second only to Liszt in the musical firmament—would be giving concerts in the Singakademie on 12 and 14 February. After discussions with the conductor for their concert, Ludwig von Brenner, Moszkowski and Scharwenka decided to postpone their concert until 27 March.

In the meantime, Moszkowski organized a preview of his concerto and symphony with the orchestra of the Neue Akademie der Tonkunst. Moszkowski’s diary entry for 25 March reads: ‘On March 20th, a performance in front of Kullak took place, in which I, however, did not conduct my symphonic movement because I got the chicken pox and from which I am not yet quite free today.’

The rehearsals for the concert at the Singakademie with von Brenner did not run smoothly. Moszkowski confided: ‘I should mention that the first rehearsal in the Villa Colonna gave the impression of a black pudding in cross section and that von Brenner put down his baton, claiming the concerto was unconductable. I swore revenge on this villain! … The second rehearsal in the Cäciliensaal went brilliantly.’ In the event, the concert was a great success: ‘On the day of the performance, I was very calm, as Philipp was. The concerto went brilliantly. I left out the Caprice [Moszkowski’s Op 4]; I had jitters with this bit … Rubinstein was at our concert and talked very well about it to [Johanna] Wenzel.’

The following spring, Moszkowski played his new concerto to Liszt in Weimar with gratifying results: ‘He even arranged a small private concert for Madame [Baroness Olga] von Meyendorff in which I played it with him on two pianos.’ Moszkowski dedicated the work to Liszt. There is no record of any further performance until 9 January 2014: 139 years after its premiere, the B minor concerto received its second public hearing when it was presented in the Philharmonie de Varsovie with the present soloist and conductor and the Filharmonia Podkarpacka in Rzeszów.

The concerto remained unpublished. ‘I did not find at that time, of course, a publisher for such an extensive work’, Moszkowski wrote in his diary. ‘When I was later no longer desperate for a publisher I did not like the piece any more. I worked it all over, sold it, but paid back the fee at the last moment and kept my concerto because it displeased me again.’ Moszkowski was renowned for his lively sense of humour. In reply to a request from the German-American composer Ernst Perabo, he wrote: ‘I should be happy to send you my piano concerto but for two reasons: first, it is worthless; second, it is most convenient (the score being four hundred pages long) for making my piano stool higher when I am engaged in studying better works.’

The bound manuscript in Moszkowski’s hand has ‘Op 6’ stamped on the spine. Yet in 1875 his Fantaisie-Impromptu was published with that opus number, and it seems that Moszkowski had designated the concerto as his Op 3. This confusion no doubt contributed to the ‘loss’ of the score. The Bibliothèque nationale de France, too, was unaware of the importance of the archive, acquired sometime in 1961 from, it is thought, Suzanne Redon, art collector and daughter-in-law of the painter Odilon Redon (1840–1916), a friend of the composer.

Though written when Moszkowski was still a student, the concerto is way above the normal level of that disparaging category of ‘student work’. It is one of the longest piano concertos composed up to that time (it outlasts even Brahms’s notoriously lengthy Piano Concerto No 2, another four-movement leviathan completed seven years later). The orchestration is supremely accomplished and imaginative; the technically demanding piano-writing has the models of Schumann, Chopin, Liszt and Rubinstein to recommend it; the melodic ideas are fresh and original. It is only the over-long final movement that is not wholly convincing.

The concerto is scored for double woodwind (with added piccolo), four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani, triangle and strings. Though all four movements are distinct entities, Moszkowski seems to view them as a seamless succession, ending the first and third on the dominant major (leading naturally into the tonic minor) and asking for the third movement to follow the second without a break.

While the opening motif (and the soloist’s echo of it) occurs in different guises throughout the work, the first movement in 3/4 adheres to no traditional sonata form—unlike the third movement and the majority of the fourth. The sinister introduction (109 bars before the piano’s first entry) soon gives way to the genial character that informs most of the concerto. A second distinct subject is presented (at 5’16”) and a third (at 6’58”) until Moszkowski returns to the opening material (8’40”, risoluto e marcatissimo) followed by a passage reminiscent of Chopin’s E minor concerto.

The Adagio (in 2/4 time, molto cantabile) has three glorious themes, the second, introduced by the piano, in G major, the third (at 9’16”) in the key of E major—which is also the key of the Scherzo. Its vivacious theme is straight out of a Parisian opéra-comique (Offenbach was then at the height of his power) and has all the hallmarks of the mature Moszkowski familiar from his études and the piano concerto Op 59. After a delicious modulation into E flat major, there is a return to E major before a further switch to B major for the second subject (tranquillo, gracioso e cantabile). A transitional passage returns the music to the tonic minor with an insistent series of solo F sharps from the timpani before the finale.

After an introductory twenty bars (Allegro sostenuto) Moszkowski’s finale launches into another of his irresistibly exuberant themes (Allegro con spirito). A second, more relaxed subject (molto espressivo e appassionato) is given out by the clarinets and cellos. The soloist has little respite until the flutes reintroduce the first subject (at 10’49”), at which point the piano is given an unusually lengthy break before returning with the first of two bravura cadenzas. Moszkowski presents a new idea as late as 16’11”, as though he is enjoying himself so much he does not know how or when to stop. But soon afterwards the music settles on B major for the concluding pages which, grandiloquent as they are, summon a surprisingly modest contribution from the piano.

Classical music is littered with the names of one-hit wonders—those composers who are remembered for a single work. Adolf Schulz-Evler is such a one, though it would be hard to think of another about whom so little is known. Musicologists even find it hard to decide on his first name: different sources give it as Andrzej, Andrei, Adolf or Henryk. His surname is spelt variously Szulc (in his native Polish), Schulz or Schultz (German). To distinguish himself from several other musical families named Szulc living in Warsaw at the end of the nineteenth century, he added Evler (supposedly his mother’s maiden name). We know he was born in Radom on 12 December 1852, that he died in Warsaw on 15 May 1905 and that if you mention his hyphenated name in musical circles you will automatically be referred to his one hit: the Arabesques de concert sur des thèmes de Johann Strauss II ‘An der schönen blauen Donau’. Still popular, it is a brilliant and effective end-of-recital display piece, made famous by Josef Lhévinne’s unsurpassed 1928 recording.

What else do we know of Schulz-Evler? He studied at the Instytut Muzyczny (Institute of Music) in Warsaw with Rudolf Strobl (piano) and Stanisław Moniuszko (composition), graduated at fifteen and then went to Berlin to develop his skills under Carl Tausig. In 1882, after a few years teaching in Warsaw, he left for Moscow where he was lauded by no less than Anton Rubinstein before being appointed head of piano at a private music school in St Petersburg. In 1888 we find him in Kharkov (Ukraine’s second largest city) as a professor in a local conservatory. In 1905 Schulz-Evler relinquished his professorship and returned to Warsaw where he intended to make his home again. Sadly, he died only months afterwards and was buried at the Cmentarz Ewangelicko-Augsburski (a Protestant cemetery) on 17 May 1905.

He must have been quite a pianist. The dazzling Blue Danube transcription aside, Schulz-Evler’s other solo works, whatever their musical merits, are for top flight virtuosos only, as a brief acquaintance with his Variations in G and (especially) his fearsome 1896 Octave Étude will make clear. The reviewer of a concert Schulz-Evler gave in Warsaw at the beginning of 1896 would seem to agree, describing him as ‘a pianist with an exceptional technique, who combines subtlety and delicacy of sound with bravura and power. It is a shame, however, that Mr Schulz-Evler does not always apply these qualities, because as much as the audience was enthralled by his renditions of Handel, Bach and Scarlatti, we were not entirely convinced by his interpretation of Schumann. Mr Schulz-Evler also presented works that he himself wrote, yet his own compositions, with quite ordinary themes, do not sound overly attractive: they only seem to prepare the ground for a display of brilliant technique.’ It is a description that might well apply to the work recorded here.

Schulz-Evler’s Russian Rhapsody, Op 14, comes from the same stable as Chopin’s Fantasy on Polish Airs and Liszt’s Hungarian Fantasy, as well as (to give rather later examples) Lyapunov’s Rhapsody on Ukrainian Themes and Paderewski’s Polish Fantasy. The first of five (or is it six?) unidentified Russian-sounding folk melodies is set in the sombre key of F minor; the second (2’51”) is in the relative major of A flat introduced by the clarinet and oboe. After the third theme (4’20”, Allegro vivace), the key shifts via B major to the relative G sharp minor for the doleful fourth air. Another tune and change of key (D flat major) occurs at 7’38”. From there the music steadily increases in tension as Schulz-Evler puts his foot on the gas, as it were, to take in yet another theme (9’59”, Presto) before accelerating yet more into the prestissimo final pages. The Russian Rhapsody may not qualify to join the illustrious works mentioned above but it is nevertheless a fascinating curiosity of the genre and sheds a further ray of light on this shadowy adornment of the piano’s history.

Jeremy Nicholas © 2016

Reviews

BBC Music Magazine November 2016

“Angelov dispatches the hugely taxing piano part with consummate virtuosity, and the orchestra respond with alert and strongly characterised playing under Vladimir Kirjadev…a very welcome addition to Hyperion’s invaluable Romantic Piano Concerto series – 5 out of 5 stars

Gramophone Magazine July 2016

[the Moszkowski] is given an unstintingly engaged and engaging performance by pianist, conductor, and the BBC Scottish SO…Angelov’s experience of Chopin serves him well, helping him make the most of writing that abounds in a sense of rhapsody and silvery filigree. Add to that an exuberant virtuosity and a penchant for spinning a good tune, and you have a worthwhile addition to the series

International Piano September 2016

“Ludimol Angelov plays with enviable fluency and affection – 4 out of 5 stars

Classical Ear September 2016

“Ludmil Angelov achieves minor miracles by throwing everything he can technically and interpretatively at these works, as does Vladimir Kiradjiev, who secures admirably direct playing from the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra – 5 out of 5 stars