Customer Reviews

Litolff: Concerti Symphonique

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Litollf wrote a total of five pieces in this form, but the first is lost. With this disc Hyperion has issued #3 and #5. Anyone who has heard and enjoyed the previous release of #2 and #4 will not be disappointed by these. Grand music it is indeed!

Hyperion has done a great service to music lovers with their series The Romantic Piano Concerto. With so many recordings of a small number of classical pieces, it is always refreshing to hear music that is seldom if ever heard. Most of the concerti in this series deserve an occasional hearing, and some are truly forgotten masterworks.

Highly recommended!

Peter Donohoe's earlier recording of the Concertos Symphoniques 2 and 4 for Hyperion did much to elevate Litolff in my mind--no longer the composer of a famous scherzo surrounded by acres of extraneous notes. Still, I found the Second Concerto less than stimulating and the Fourth too adicted to empty Sturm and Drang posturing, fine as many of its best moments were. Well, here is a disc that should banish for all time the notion that Litolff was a musical one-trick pony.

The Third Concerto, subtitled "National Hollandais" is a tribute to the Dutch people, who embraced his razzle-dazzle pianism with perhaps the greatest enthusiasm he had experienced up to that date (1845). To that end, the concerto uses Dutch melodic material and is in a singularly festive vein. The first movement, Maestoso, starts with martial flourishes in the brass and drums, and the brief march motif introduced by the drums shapes the whole of this celebratory movement. Except that some of the writing for piano displays the usual empty daring-do the great Romantic composer-pianists tossed together to show off their techniques, its an exciting and eventful movement. If the scherzo and slow movement are a somewhat less memorable, the last movement is an infectious romp for piano and orchestra, with an impressively triumphal coda.

Better still is the Fifth Concerto, in the weighty key of C minor. The first movement starts with an agitated figure in the strings that sets the mood of this more darkly dramatic music. There are heaven-storming passages for both piano and orchestra, but there is also a lovely, heart-on-the-sleeve melody played by the piano and cellos that's about as luscious as one of the big tunes in the Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov concertos. For that alone Litolff's concerto should be welcomed back into concert halls.

But it has more going for it. First, we have gracious slow movement punctuated by moments of turbulent drama. The gracious stuff sounds like Mendelssohn; the turbulence recalls Saint-Saens--which is characteristic of this Janus-like composer. Then Litolff creates a fleet scherzo in the manner of the Fourth Concerto's justly famous one, though the present scherzo has something of the diabolic about it. Cunning music. Finally, the last movement has genuine tension and drama. For most of its length, it is a troubled, driven piece. The pianist injects moments of lyrical reflectiveness, but these are swept away by the whirlwind coda that concludes the work on an aptly stormy note. It's hard to believe this concerto, undoubtedly Litolff's best music, receives its first recording with this disc!

As in their earlier Litolff offering, Donohoe and Litton seem the perfect partners, Litton providing unfailingly symphathetic support for the pianist's committed playing. Certainly, this disc represents one of the best surprises in Hyperion's often surprising Romantic Piano Concerto series.

It is curious that the Four remaining (the first has been lost) Concerto Symphoniques of Henry Litolff have not been given very much attention. The only music that is heard often is the Scherzo from the Fourth concerto. This is sad because these are tuneful and dramatic works with great writing for the piano. This disc holds the Third and Fifth Concertos performed beautifully by Peter Donohoe. The Third had a turbulent genesis in that Litolff was forced to flee from England (literally being smuggled out of the country) to Holland during a very messy divorce. In gratitude to the warm reception given to him in Holland, the Third Concerto, which includes two Dutch themes) was titled National Hollandais. The music is lyrical and Mendelssohnian in character.

The Fifth Concerto did not enjoy as much popularity as the Third and Fourth concertos and this is its first recording. The Fifth has a broader orchestration and is darker and mature in character. However, make no mistake that this concerto is any less brilliant than those before it. The Scherzo is particularly memorable and no less engaging than the famous Fourth Concerto. This recording is a must for anyone who has the prior Litolff Hyperion disc and makes a great introduction to his music.

I agree with the sentiment that Hyperion has done an enormous service to classical music by recording the enormous number of rarely heard piano concerti it has issued through its "Romantic Piano Concerto" series. Better yet, they have done so using first rate artists all around. That having been said, the assorted volumes of the series are, as one might expect, a mixed bag. True, I have found some occasional gems (or diamonds in the rough, perhaps), but the term "richly deserved obscurity" comes to mind more often than not when listening to most of the pieces I have purchased.

In the case of the four massive, symphonically constructed Litolff concertos, only the brief scherzo of fourth concerto has found its way into the standard repertoire. When I heard the catchy, adroit confection for the first time, played by no less than Misha Dichter and Neville Marriner on an excellent Phillips release, I had to find out more. I have since put my money where my curiosity is. I have bought both of the Hyperion volumes of Litolff's oeuvre. As far as I am concerned, none of the four in their present form is a fabulous, undiscovered masterpiece that rightly should be displacing Brahms or Tchaikovsky's efforts in this genre. Having said that, they are not badly written, with plentiful, rich melodic material, decent orchestration, and lots of razzle-dazzle for the keyboard soloist. Imagine one of Chopin's concertos, better orchestrated but not as well written for the soloist or as competently developed thematically, and you sort of have the idea. Indeed, I wish some clever, talented modern day composer would take up these concertos and rework them, improving the themes while cutting away the dead wood and formulating some real development to the motifs. He or she would have lots of raw material. The equal of Beethoven or Brahms this music never will be, but polished by the hands of a craftsman you might have something that at least would be worth hearing in place of yet another routine performance of the Chopin, Grieg or even the Tchaikovsky concertos.