Léon Kreutzer; Piano Concerto in Eb

[Darrel Hoffman]

There are other Kreutzer realisations coming!? Excellent news!

That's news to me.  I'm not aware of any other concertante work of his, but then I don't know much about him in general besides the concerto.  I'd certainly be willing to feature him again if anyone knows of other works in the genre that he did.

Perhaps eschiss1 was referring to those AI techno-remixes of the 3rd movement I had done?  That was fun, but I don't know if I'll be doing much of that in the future.  It just seemed like a natural fit for that movement.

[eschiss1]

Thought I remembered someone having done a synthesized recording of some of his chamber music. (Actually, it seems I'm remembering Matesic having recorded his 8th quartet, Adagio for A-flat, and violin/piano Romance Op.10 (back in 2018) over at IMSLP... my mistake.)

[eschiss1]

btw, added the piano concerto to the very summary list of his works at Wikipedia.

[4candles]

I'd be curious to hear what Mark and Gareth have to say about Darrel's  Kreutzer concerto realisation, given that they were both so complimentary upon hearing the now much inferior-sounding Musescore version.

[Ilja]

I think you've made a great point, Ilja, about Kreutzer adding a "complete individual contribution". His individuality as a person and his individuality of expression is one of the things that I've found most fascinating about Kreutzer.

Perhaps, a better comparison than the one to Koechlin is to William Henry Fry, whose lack of formal education caused him to write similarly idiosyncratic compositions in the form of the Niagara Symphony.

[FBerwald]

That Niagra Symphony was the most painful thing I have ever had to sit through, perhaps second to Symphonie romantique by Joncières.

[4candles]

But what of the Kreutzer FBerwald? Banishing WH Fry from your mind for the time be7ng, do you have any thoughts on this work?

[FBerwald]

So far the 1st movement failed to make any sort of impression, It felt like the composer is working in blocks of materials, placed after each other may be I have to hear this again. The 2nd movement is beautiful - Beethoven's shadow looms large but yet this didn't feel like a slavish imitation - quite charming! The 3rd movement is quirky - I can't decide if I love it or hate it. If only there was a way to hear [at least this movement] performed on real instrument - I have a feeling it might make quite an impact - the piano often felt like it was imitating xylophones or hammered dulcimers. I have yet to hear the last movement. 

[Darrel Hoffman]

Love or hate, that's kind of where I was on the 3rd movement.  It just didn't feel like music to me, or at least not classical music.  (There's a reason I made a techno remix of it, that actually felt more like where it belonged.)

It's no surprise that Beethoven's shadow appears here; there's a direct connection to the family - Léon's uncle Rodolphe Kreutzer was the dedicatee of Beethoven's so-called "Kreutzer Sonata" for violin, though he apparently never played it.  I'd be curious to see how this one in particular sounds on real instruments, as I believe the movement to be literally unplayable as written - I'm sure those tremolos on both piano and strings cannot be played faithfully except by machine.  I had to reduce the number of repetitions in them in order to make it sound even a bit realistic.

I am surprised to see so much disdain for the 1st movement, which was my favorite of the 4.  Aside from maybe being too long - I do feel like maybe it'd be better as a standalone piece, as would the 4th.  That's why I've described this as a concerto sandwich - 2 full concertos with a couple other movements stuck in between them.

[Mark Thomas]

This is quite a listen! Kreutzer's Piano Concerto must have struck anyone listening to it in the 1860s as being as revolutionary and idiosyncratic as Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique did a few decades earlier. My first reaction to the opening movement was that it's way too long, and it is of course, but not for the usual reason that the material has been stretched too thin. Certainly Kreutzer's material isn't that original or (I suspect) memorable and can't sustain the movement's length but his imagination has gone into overdrive in finding different ways to present it. So, for me at least, the fascination was in wondering what Kreutzer was going to do next, it's discursive but packed full of incident. Ilja's right, though, a more experienced or better educated composer would have reined in his imagination and produced a much more compact movement presenting his best ideas.

The slow movement is pretty straightforward, is effective and is a credit to Kreutzer, although still a mite overlong, even when speeded up as 4candles suggests. As everyone has written, the third movement is most unusual, but it's quirky playfulness is quite endearing and it's certainly the most memorable movement of the four. For me, the finale is the least interesting and individual movement. Again, it's overlong but, unlike the first movement, the almost unvaryingly upbeat character of the music gets wearing quite quickly. I'm delighted to have at last heard this flawed but fascinating piece in full, and great kudos to Darrel for sticking with it and making such a convincing realisation of it.