The manuscript of the piano concerto was (re)discovered recently, and there is now a recording on Youtube, from September 2024:
Giovanni Alvino, piano
RTSH Symphony Orchestra, Tirana
conducted by Leonardo Quadrini.
This is available on the pianist's own channel (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ETRizPEXsw) or also here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzGc-lruTeA).
The Piano Concerto is apparently due for digital release on 19th September:
https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/products/9779582--alfonso-rendano-piano-concerto-allegro-in-a-minor
Thanks, Alan. The audio extracts are promising.
The Albanian YouTube recording sounds like watered-down Brahms at his most ponderous, and I am not sure that this is down entirely to the conductor and orchestra. Long, and tepid, and short of ideas,perhaps.
Just because a manuscript is discovered (cf the Suppe symphony) does not mean that a recording should ensue.
I'll be purchasing the CD if and when it appears: I find the history of non-operatic music by Italian composers in the late nineteenth/early twentieth centuries very interesting, e.g. Sgambati, Martucci, et al...
I note that the new recording was made in Germany, with the excellent Oldenburgisches Staatsorchester, the same band featured on the first-rate cpo recordings of Dietrich's Symphony, VC, etc. That gives me confidence that the overall performance will be a good one. Here's the finale:
https://soundcloud.com/naxosmusicgroup/rendano-a-piano-concerto-iii-vivace
Sounds good to me!
I'll try browsing SBN (https://opac.sbn.it/) later to see if I can find locations of scores etc. of Rendano's works in Italian libraries but it's loading very slowly right now...
(It may be my browser, which is doing something weird when it does connect. ICCU SBN (https://www.iccu.sbn.it/en/sbn/index.html) is working better but doesn't quite do what I'm looking to do. Returning to Google Chrome from DuckDuckGo is seeming better all the time, or even other browsers.)
Quote from: Alan Howe on Sunday 08 June 2025, 15:01Here's the finale:
https://soundcloud.com/naxosmusicgroup/rendano-a-piano-concerto-iii-vivace
Sounds good to me!
Me too. Something about Rendano's writing for the piano and the spareness of the orchestration reminds me of Anton Rubinstein's concertos, which is not a bad thing.
And by the way, the forthcoming new recording - judging by the timings at Presto - will be a good deal swifter than the one on YouTube. All to the good, I think.
That's very welcome news
Dynamic's new releases includes a new upcoming recording of Alfonso Rendano's 1870s piano concerto (which we've mentioned before, but not in years.) Their YouTube says "World Premiere Recording", but I don't think so? Or maybe the other recordings were of reductions...
Yes, the other commercial release was a two piano reduction played by Daniela Roma and Rodolfo Rubino
I've merged the previous two posts with the start of a previous exchange on this subject.
Ah, thanks. Apologies for the duplication!!
No apology necessary, Eric. Just thought it might broaden the discussion.
I'm sorry to report disappointment with this release - not with the performance, but with the work itself. To be frank, it's an amorphous bore overall with just a few passages of true inspiration. I was hoping for better, but those hopes have been dashed now that I've heard the whole concerto. Tread extremely carefully!
I've played it a number of times now, and it improves on better acquaintance to the extent that I am beginning to think it coheres. But there are a lot more works that I'd rather rehear, and it's gone on the shelf now.
To my ears ,the Bolet performance of the Sgambati beats it hollow.
I'm tempted to add that Sgambati is by some distance the better composer. It seems to me that Rendano's ambition (in his PC) rather outstrips his talent as a composer.
Rendano's Piano Concerto is a bore. The first movement huffs and puffs and goes nowhere (but takes an age to do it), the second initially promises rhapsodic beauty, but the piano part is just aimless noodling. Bizarrely, the finale is the most successful, but the bar's been set so low by its predecessors that that isn't much of an achievement. This is one case of the justly unsung.
I agree with you all. I tried to listen to the live performance by Giovanni Alvino already posted on YT a few times months ago but just can't keep myself focused on it. It's really boring.
It's a dog's breakfast that any self-respecting canine would refuse. Understandably, everyone concerned looks bored.
Sorry to pile on, but after devoting some time to this I can only agree with the consensus. It's interesting that a comparison between the finale of this work and Rubinstein's work was made, because particularly the first movement of the Rendano PC demonstrates a lack of critical self-reflection that also affects many of Rubinstein's works, although I don't see how even the most rigorous editing would turn this into a minor masterpiece.
As Mark has stated, the Finale is by far the best movement of the three. However, even here there is an excess of pianistic noodling, the whole thing just peters out into nothingness, and Rendano's shortcomings in orchestration are all too evident: it's all rather ham-fisted and unimaginative. And the whole thing doesn't even exist in the same universe of inspiration as any of Sgambati's works.