Johann Peter Pixis

[Peter1953]

Today I have listened after so many years to the Concerto for Piano, Violin and String Orchestra in F sharp minor, coupled on a LP (label Turnabout of course) with Moscheles’ Grande Sonate Symphonique for four-hand piano arrangement. The Pixis’ concerto is a real gem and the 2nd movement, an adagio sostenuto, features, as the violist Kees Kooper says, “one of the most beautiful melodies one can ever hope to hear”. I fully agree. It is a very intense, heavenly theme. Has any member ever heard this marvellous concerto?

Music of Pixis on a CD seems to be very rare. The only piece I have is the “Fantasie dramatique pour le piano à quatre-mains sur des motifs des Hugenots” (from Meyerbeer) played by the Duo Alkan (Alberto Baldrighi and Anne Colette Ricciardi).

[orff]

Have heard nothing of the music of Pixis and, from your commentary, am regretting it.  As stated, there appears to be hardly anything recorded on CD.  The Pixis Concerto must be found on disc - the search begins!!!

[Alan Howe]

I believe that Hyperion may be going to bring out Pixis' PC, coupled with the later PC by Jacob Rosenhain.

[Hovite]

Today I have listened after so many years to the Concerto for Piano, Violin and String Orchestra in F sharp minor, coupled on a LP (label Turnabout of course) with Moscheles’ Grande Sonate Symphonique for four-hand piano arrangement. The Pixis’ concerto is a real gem and the 2nd movement, an adagio sostenuto, features, as the violist Kees Kooper says, “one of the most beautiful melodies one can ever hope to hear”. I fully agree. It is a very intense, heavenly theme. Has any member ever heard this marvellous concerto?

Yes, I have heard it, but I discarded all my LPs a decade or so ago, during a house move.

Music of Pixis on a CD seems to be very rare.

The only Pixis that I have on CD is the collaborative Hexaméron, by Liszt, Thalberg, Pixis, Herz, Czerny, and Chopin, which is a set of variations on a theme by Bellini. The piano version is on Liszt: The Complete Music for Solo Piano volume 10, CDA66433, and there is also a concertante arrangement, partly reconstructed by the pianist Leslie Howard, on Liszt: Music for Piano Orchestra volume 1, CDA67401/2.

[Gareth Vaughan]

After I directed Mike Spring to the Full Score of Pixis' PC, Op. 100 in the library of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna, he became keen to record it and the original coupling was to have been with the Rosenhain. However, since he discovered the score of Pixis' Concertino for piano & orchestra in the Sibley Library in America, he is now thinking about an all Pixis disk which would have to include the splendid double concerto for violin and piano. The problem is that Kees Kooper has the score and parts and declines to reply to any emails about the work. I think he wants the Vox/Turnabout recording he made with his wife, Mary Louise Boehm, to be re-released before he'll condone another recording. All a bit frustrating.

[JimL]

The orchestra in the double concerto is just strings?  Bummer!

[Mark Thomas]

Maybe, just maybe, it's fairer to criticise after you've heard the work?

[Gareth Vaughan]

The double concerto is a minor masterpiece. The first two movts. are superb - arresting, exciting, lyrical... everything one looks for in a concerto; the finale not quite in the same league perhaps, but the whole work a joy from beginning to end.

[Mark Thomas]

I do agree on all counts: first two movements are great stuff, the finale on a rather lower plane, but I'm pleased to have the work and play it often.

[Peter1953]

Wouldn’t that be a music lovers dream coming true? A disk with Pixis’ 3 concertos? Booklet notes written by Kees Kooper?
His notes on the LP sleeve are interesting enough. Pixis must have been a formidable pianist and composer. A nice anecdote is recorded by Kees Kooper: “Schumann expressed great admiration. So did Franz Liszt, in a rather unorthodox way. In 1837, in Paris, he presented in concert, two trios, by Beethoven and Pixis. Without announcement he played the trios in reverse order. The public hailed the Pixis, thought to be Beethoven, as a masterwork; the real Beethoven came in second best.”