Presented at the Grieg Conference in Berlin May 14, 2009
Gregory Martin, USA
DMA, Keyboard Faculty
University of Indianapolis
Grieg‘s Untold Triumph: The Piano Concerto, Gustav Mahler,
and a New Approach to the Sonata Aesthetic
There’s no time for elaborate introductions today, but I’d like to start with a (very) brief survey of the way in which the concerto, especially the piano concerto, developed from the three separate and independent movement-structure of, say, Mozart to a more unified conception during the course of the 19th-century. Through the early canonic examples of Beethoven (nos. 4 and 5), which elide movements two and three, and the Weber Konzertstücke, we arrive at the Mendelssohn concerti – works that solved the tonal dilemma of the double-exposition model while simultaneously eliding all three movements. The Schumann concerto – the example which has earned the greatest number of comparisons with Grieg’s effort – replaces a true slow middle movement with an intermezzo (and in so doing strikes a resemblance with Beethoven’s Waldstein sonata); there are other concertino works by Schumann which further contribute to the progression toward a more unified design.
Download the whole paper here
Gregory Martin paper 2009