I see this has appeared on prestomusic web site as forthcoming from Hyperion, volume 84 of their Romantic Piano Concertos.
https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/products/9322040--schmitt-a-piano-concertos (https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/products/9322040--schmitt-a-piano-concertos)
Wow! I'd never heard of him. His dates are: 1788-1866.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aloys_Schmitt
https://www.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/musik/schmitt.html (in German)
I have a feeling at the back of my mind that he might have taught Thalberg but I've checked and there is no mention of it that I can find.
Sounds like a fascinating release!!
I've known the name for some years, but never heard a note of his music. It sounds like standard RPC fare to me and despite the excellent forces involved, I think I'll wait for a more attention-grabbing release in the series.
Hope you all enjoy it!
Aloys Schmitt wrote 3 piano concertos and 2 he called concertinos (Opp. 75 & 76) and I located the performance materials for all of them. So I hope Hyperion will record the lot eventually.
Kudos to you, Gareth!
I have amended my earlier post - I misremembered (5, not 6 piano concertos/concertinos). The Op. 75 "concertino" is subtitled 'Le Retour a Francfort', and the Op. 76 in E flat is variously referred to as a concerto or concertino. Score and parts to that are in Fleisher.
I refer Alan to my posting on this forum dated 18.4.2016, where his five works for piano and orchestra are listed.
This is the earlier thread on Schmitt to which Giles is referring:
http://www.unsungcomposers.com/forum/index.php/topic,6073.msg64260.html#msg64260
Apologies for having entirely forgotten about the composer.
In this bicentenary year of Raff's birth, Hyperion have seen fit to exhume the first two concertos of this German pedagogue and composer instead of the more obvious choice. The booklet refers to them forming part of the 90% of such works which remain resolutely below the iceberg's surface and leaves judgement to the listener. Howard Shelley combines the role of conductor and pianist and performs the works (plus a one-movement filler) in his usual well-mannered,but slightly feline way. Not even a lion of the keyboard such as Ponti would have been able to bring these two corpses to life. I suspect that Ponti would not even have bothered.
There have been masterpieces (the Brull immediately springs to mind) and also-rans in this long-running series,but Aloys Schmidt, if these works are typical of the man,falls into neither category. Rather,he has put me in mind of the famous racehorse Vodkatini. Those who remember this animal from 40 or so years ago will recall that Vodkatini had a particular speciality. When the starter raised his flag, the horse would resolutely refuse to race.That,I fear,is the category for Schmitt.
...whereas I'm rather looking forward to these PCs. Not everything needs to be a masterpiece - just music that's fun to hear.
I actually find these concerti delightfully melodic and beautifully constructed. They are well mannered and slightly old fashioned for their time, but thoroughly enjoyable pieces of light music, IMHO.
Quote from: Gareth Vaughan on Wednesday 10 August 2022, 19:23and slightly old fashioned for their time
Old fashioned in a classical way. Somewhat strange choices for the "Romantic Piano Concertos" series.
I'd say old-fashioned in a post-Beethovenian way. They appear to have been written around 1820 - I haven't been able to establish their dates. But they're more than 'classical' in style; it's impossible not to hear the influence of LvB.
Well put, Alan, and quite correct. Although I initially suggested to Hyperion that they would fit with the Classical PC series, I think they were right to include them in the RPC series in the end.
Schmitt's other work labeled op.14 was published around 1813; his op.35 was published in 1822, and it may be that a contemporary journal mentions op.34, I will have a look... I expect the program notes to the Hyperion Recording already have exact hours of composition, premiere, publication, and even engraving, mind, based on past experience...
I had a quick look at a pdf of the notes that accompany the Hyperion recording and couldn't see any composition dates. Thanks for the extra information, Eric.
For context: Beethoven's PC5 ('Emperor') was written 1809 and premiered in 1811.
BTW Op.14 was published, or at any rate reviewed, in 1823 too (though it may have been published earlier): see this review (https://books.google.com/books?id=iV8PAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA321) in the May 14 1823 AMZ.
Having been absent from UC for a while, due to medical issues, I am now working through the backlog of 'unread posts' - starting here! Aloys Schmitt piano concertos - yet more Unsung music to explore - what an exciting prospect! As the list posted by Giles indicates, he was vey productive, and I wonder how many of his other works survive.
A fair number, some of which are used in competition programs in new editions, according to Worldcat.
Actually it's hard to see how Schmitt's PCs could have been regarded as 'old fashioned' at the time of their composition; I can understand how this would have become the case in subsequent decades, but it seems to me that they are very much 'of their time'. Of course, the romantic movement developed quickly in the years following their composition, but that's no reason for their current neglect. The only issue is whether they're any good...
I've spent much of yesterday listening to Schmitt's concertos, and let's just say that if you like Hummel's concertos, you are going to like these. They're not particularly original, but well-crafted and "catchy" in the best sense of the word.
The comparison with Hummel is very apt, Ilja.
Do you think they're less obviously virtuoso pieces, though?
Perhaps I should rather have said "late Hummel", particularly the A flat and F concertos. Moreover, the slow movements seem to have a little more gravitas about them than Hummel's typically do. But overall, I find them quite similar.
I agree that these concertos seem to be in line with the mainstream of their time (early 1820s); but I can also see how they could come across as old-fashioned not that much later, when Mendelssohn, Burgmüller et al. started to gain notoriety. And the Rondeau Brilliant of 1839 even sounds as though it could pre-date either of the two concertos.
Quote from: Ilja on Saturday 13 August 2022, 12:30I've spent much of yesterday listening to Schmitt's concertos, and let's just say that if you like Hummel's concertos, you are going to like these. They're not particularly original, but well-crafted and "catchy" in the best sense of the word.
I agree!
The review in October's Gramophone says:
By 1830 his concert career was virtually over. After hearing him early the following year, the young Chopin noted that 'Schmitt, a pianist from Frankfurt, had a rough reception although he is over 40 and composes 80-year-old music'.
That quote, from Jeremy Nicholas's excellent booklet notes, implies that Schmitt's piano music was already deemed old-fashioned by 1830. Robert Schumann, in a review of the Rondeau brillant, seems to have agreed. Probably composed between 1815 and 1825, both these concertos owe an obvious debt to Mozart (above all his D minor Concerto, K466), Beethoven and, in their pianistic glitter, Hummel.
Quoteand composes 80-year-old music
That's just plain silly, of course. I'm glad we can enjoy Schmitt's music today.
Well, having reviewed it for MusicWeb, I have to say that I enjoyed it!
Do you suppose that when Schumann composed his PC (pub.1846) he would have regarded Chopin's PCs (1829-30) as 'old fashioned'?
There's nothing so unforgiving as the march of musical fashion. And nothing more important from our perspective than establishing whether the music's any good rather than how far behind the fashion of the day it trailed.
I'm guessing that with all of Schumann's written music criticism we may not have to guess at an answer to that one? (In fact, in response to an unfavorable criticism of Chopin's concertante Op.2, he wrote "What is a whole volume of a journal in the face of a Chopin concerto?")
I guess it was 'safe' to denigrate figures such as Schmitt and Moscheles. It's still going on today...
I bought (and started reading) an interesting book called "Schumann's Virtuosity: Criticism, Composition, and Performance in Nineteenth-Century Germany" that talks about the shifting attitudes towards virtuosity in 19th-century Germany and Schumann's criticism (got it cheaply at Amazon Kindle). I could see if Schmitt is mentioned therein...
(Edit: I love how academic books are sometimes available very cheaply or for free because of a grant online that still cost $50+ to get in print. Some really neat things, some of them about aspects of music, and one book about Jewish history by an old friend of mine, I've gotten this way...)
Doesn't mention Schmitt. Book does have this to say about Moscheles early on - "Moscheles, one of Schumann's early idols, enjoyed an uncommonly wide-ranging career. Roughly the same generation as Hummel, he lived from 1794 to 1870. He toured as a pianist, conducted the London Philharmonic, gave "historical soirees" where he performed Bach and Scarlatti, and taught at the Leipzig Conservatory. In addition to piano showpieces like his "Alexander" Variations, he composed chamber and orchestral music and, by the 1830s, was writing concertos that Schumann believed were turning away from postclassical norms (see chapter 4)". (Haven't gotten to chapter 4 yet :) but I have a notion that the author may share the common bias against Moscheles and against Hummel, who was the subject of the first half of the paragraph. The "roughly the same generation as Hummel" is rather eye-boggling, but maybe he means a different Hummel.)
As to Schumann's opinion of Chopin's 2 concertos so-named, he said, in a review of them, (in a translation from the German) (in 1836) "Chopin's works are cannons buried in flowers".
Not much cannon in his orchestrations! The power's in the flowers...
Some accounts claim he wasn't referring to the concertos at all even though it was in a review of them, and I don't know if canon and cannon are the pun in German that they are in English (are they, canonically anyway?) Though yes, if he'd orchestrated the 2 concertos even as well as he did his other concertante works, leave alone concertos by comparable contemporaries (and there were few composers comparable to Chopin, though I admit I once held otherwise), I'd think better of them. As it is, they're among his most popular works but among my least favorite, to put it mildly, in his output. Edit: Walker's excellent (imho) biography of Chopin does not touch on this, but it could be that Chopin, like Mozart in his middle concertos, was adapting to allow for orchestras of less than brilliant abilities. Not sure.
(I will listen to the Schmitt concertos as soon as may be so as better to contribute to this thread, of course. Apologies. Though Amazon Music has no Hyperion recordings, so streaming them by that route is not an option :) )
QuoteAs it is, they're among his most popular works
There's not much choice, is there (orchestrally speaking)? I put it down to the ClassicFM effect. They're played all the time.
By the way - apologies for mis-spelling 'cannon' (I never get that right). I have now corrected it.
In German, 'Kanone' (f) means 'cannon', whereas 'Kanon' (m) means 'canon'.
Another point is surely this: Chopin was born in 1810, Schmitt in 1788; in other words, Schmitt was a full generation earlier as a composer. So, what on earth did Chopin expect Schmitt to sound like?
Now, I like Chopin's PCs, but I rather like the extra 'punch' one finds in Schmitt from this earlier generation.
Here's Jonathan's excellent review:
http://www.musicweb-international.com/Classrev/2022/Aug/Schmitt-PCs-CDA68389.htm
Sorry to revive an old topic, but this seemed relevant.
So in my continuing search for new obscure works to transcribe, I ran across this Op.60 concerto in A minor (at least it starts in A minor, ends in A major, I haven't gone through the whole thing yet to see what else it does):
https://imslp.org/wiki/Piano_Concerto%2C_Op.60_(Schmitt%2C_Aloys)
This does not appear to be either the Op.14 or the Op.34 recorded on Hyperion, and I can't find any other recordings of it, so it looks like it'd be fair game for me to work on this one (I don't do transcriptions of works that have existing recordings that I can find - or at least I try not to).
I just wanted to check with the experts here to make sure I'm not missing something. Interestingly, IMSLP has 2 piano concertos by Schmitt, but neither of them are the ones in the Hyperion recordings as far as I can tell. The other is an Eb concerto, Op.76, but it has only the piano solo part available. If someone knows where I can find the rest of the parts, I could do both of them, but the Op.60 at least seems ready to go as-is.
(I've got other stuff ahead of it to work on, I just like to keep a backlog of things to do in the future.)
Schmitt wrote 3 Piano Concertos and 2 works he called concertinos:-
Piano concerto No.1 Op.14 (orchestral parts only, Library of Congress; solo piano part only, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin)
Piano concerto No.2 Op.34 (parts, Goethe Institute, Frankfurt – unclear whether includes solo piano part, or orchestral parts only)
Piano concerto No.3 Op.60 (solo piano part & orchestral parts, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek; also at IMSLP)
Piano concertino 'Le Retour a Francfort' Op.75 [solo piano part only (pub. Offenbach), British Library & Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin; orchestral parts, Newberry Library, Chicago – lacking timpani part]
Piano concertino (or concerto) in E flat Op.76 (score and parts, Fleisher)
The first 2 are the ones recorded by Hyperion.
Yeah, this pretty much confirms what I've seen (except I missed the Op.75), so the 3rd concerto and the 2 concertinos evidently remain unrecorded? I'll definitely add the Op.60 to my list to work on then. As for the concertinos - maybe if I can figure out how to get the scores from those various libraries.
I had to check, because sometimes there are multiple competing numbering systems so I wanted to make sure it wasn't the same piece by another name. And I guess it was just a coincidence that Hyperion and IMSLP each have 2 of them, but no overlap. I almost considered that there might be two composers with the same name, but they both use the same photograph of him. Thanks.
Fleisher should lend you the score of Op. 76 for very few bucks - maybe only the cost of postage.
I think Newberry may have the solo piano part of Op. 75 as well as the orchestral parts. Don't know what they would charge to digitise them for you.
Thanks for the info, though I'm currently operating on zero budget - I'm not nearly popular enough yet to be making revenue from this project. At any rate, I've got enough to work on for a little bit. I'm already about half done with the first movement of Op.60 and quite liking it so far - it's a shame Hyperion only did the first two because this one really needs to be heard. You'll all get the chance when I finish this in several weeks. (It doesn't actually take several weeks - I'm just interspersing the work with several other pieces so I can maintain a weekly release schedule.)
Incidentally, what are your sources for knowing where these scores can be found? Is there some big master list that somebody has compiled? I know there is one for recordings that several members of this forum have put together, but a similar reference for manuscripts would be very helpful.
I think Hyperion may well do the other concertos - given time. I certainly hope so. I gave them the same list of sources as I gave you.
No, there is no master list that I know of. What I have is the result of my own research conducted over many years. However, the internet makes it much easier to locate scores than it used to be. WorldCat is a basic library research tool; ONB (Austrian National Library) https://www.onb.ac.at/en/ (https://www.onb.ac.at/en/) - together with the catalogues of other large national libraries (France, Italy, etc. including, of course, the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek and many German University libraries: Frankfurt has the Ferdinand Hiller nachlass, for example, and Hamburg has that of Ferdinand Thieriot); a number of the Scandinavian countries have their own national Music Centres who used to be (and maybe still are) very helpful; for orchestral parts the Fleisher Collection at The Free Library of Philadelphia https://catalog.freelibrary.org/ (https://catalog.freelibrary.org/) should be your first port of call; a lot of the catalogue entries for the music holdings of the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, which are substantial, are not listed online, except via the online images of the old card catalogue (useful, of course, but a bit of pain to trawl through or navigate); in the UK the JISC Library Hub https://discover.libraryhub.jisc.ac.uk/ (https://discover.libraryhub.jisc.ac.uk/) gives access to details of materials held in many UK national, academic and specialist libraries, but the Westminster Music Library (now part of the Westminster Reference Library), which has a substantial collection of music scores and parts (including a large collection of Emanuel Moor mss), is not part of it and must be accessed separately here.
(https://www.westminster.gov.uk/library-opening-times-and-contact-details/westminster-reference-library)
I forgot to add: Encore21 is a UK catalogue listing sets of choral and orchestral parts available from various libraries https://iaml-uk-irl.org/encore21/ (https://iaml-uk-irl.org/encore21/) which I have occasionally found useful.
Not to mention The Library of Congress and the many other splendid libraries in the U.S.A., most of whose catalogues are available online and whose librarians I have found are usually very helpful.
Many printed scores held by libraries can also be borrowed via inter-library loan, even in some cases from abroad.
Basically, you just have to do your research. There are a number of experienced researchers on this forum who will be happy to point you in the right direction but not, I hasten to advise, do all the work for you - but I am sure you don't expect that anyway (though I can think of one person, no longer a member of this forum, who seemed to expect precisely that!).
Finally, may I strongly recommend you explore the piano concertos of Hungarian composer Jakob Gyula Major. There are two, plus 3 "Fantasies" for piano and orchestra. The first, the Concerto Symphonique, Op. 12, was published and Fleisher has score and parts (IMSLP also has the full score); MS scores of the 2nd concerto and the 3 Fantasies are in the Hungarian State Library and, courtesy of that national library, I have digital images of the 2-piano score in my own collection. I think you will find his music very attractive.
Good luck with your work.
Gyula Major is on my list (just the Concerto Symphonique, which I had found on IMSLP already), so I'll consider that a request - I'm always open to suggestions. Won't be right away as I've a bunch of other stuff ahead of it, but I'll definitely take a look. Thanks.
I thought the Fleisher Collection mostly rented to orchestras but would be glad to be wrong.
I think that is basically right, Eric, but they have in the past lent scores to me. That was probably over 15 years ago, though, and I dealt directly with Kyle Smith then, sometimes by telephone. They might be stricter in their policies now, but I hope not. Anyway, it would do no harm to ask.
Maybe, but I'm not sure I have enough clout yet to make such a request. I'm not a professional musician or researcher, I'm just some guy with a so-far obscure and unpopular YouTube channel. I don't even have a music degree (I was 1 course short of a minor in music theory, but I'm not about to go back to school just to finish that up).
This is a hobby for me, I'm a programmer by trade. Unless I get to the point where I'm earning an income from this, I'm not sure it's worth trying. At any rate, I've got enough stuff that's freely available online to keep this going for a while before I need to start seeking offline or non-free sources.
My transcription of the 3rd concerto is now live: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wxu_1PcOZ6k
Hmm, I just noticed that IMSLP gives the Op.76 Concertino the alternate title of "Piano Concerto No.6". There's apparently another concerto, Op.54, which would make the one I just did the 4th rather than the 3rd. The Op.54 is also labeled as No.2, but given the Op.14 and Op.34 would presumably predate it, I guess there's a bit of confusion going on with the Schmitt catalog. I only have this list from IMSLP to go on:
https://imslp.org/wiki/List_of_works_by_Aloys_Schmitt
No scores or recordings are available for any but the ones already mentioned, at least on IMSLP or YouTube, though possibly elsewhere.
(Note, I'm not asking anyone to look these up for me, unless you really want to, I'm just pointing it out for the record. I suppose I should change the title of my video to be more accurate?)