Piano Concerto in A Minor

Among the works of Schumann’s miraculously productive “orchestral year” of 1841 were three symphonic pieces—the First Symphony, the initial version of the Fourth Symphony and the Overture, Scherzo & Finale—and a work in A minor entitled Phantasie for piano and orchestra. This was in fact none other than an early incarnation of what was to become the first movement of the Piano Concerto, with the addition four years later of a central “Intermezzo” and a glittering finale. A single orchestral unison fires the starting gun and the soloist enters straightaway with a tumbling flourish before oboe and then piano introduce the falling three-note theme that saturates the work, binding it together whether played as romantic reverie (the beautiful duet for piano and clarinet) or as the edgy march that closes the movement. The graceful “Intermezzo” then turns this theme upside down and leads, via wind and brass statements of the falling theme, to the skittish, exuberant finale. The composer’s wife, Clara, was the soloist at the premieres of both the Phantasie (in Leipzig) and the complete Concerto (in Dresden). Grieg heard her play the work in 1858 and it became an audible influence on his own Piano Concerto—also in A minor—a decade later. Schumann’s Piano Concerto soon became one of his most regularly performed works and stands without doubt as one of the most important post-Beethoven Romantic piano concertos.