Franz Xaver Scharwenka: Piano Concerto No.4 in F minor, Op.82, François Xavier Poizat (piano)

Franz Xaver Scharwenka - Piano Concerto No. 4 in F minor, Op. 82 François Xavier Poizat, piano, Poznań Philharmonic Orchestra, Łukasz Borowicz (conductor)
1.Allegro patetico – 00:00
2.Intermezzo: Allegro molto tranquillo – 19:20
3.Lento mesto – 26:18 --
4.Allegro con fuoco – 35:21
Franz Xaver Scharwenka (6 January 1850 - 8 December 1924) was a German pianist, composer and teacher of Bohemian-Polish descent. He was the brother of Ludwig Philipp Scharwenka (1847–1917), who was also a composer and teacher of music.

“Today, it is difficult to believe that between 1880 and the early-1900s Franz Xaver Scharwenka was a prominent pianist and composer whose works were widely performed. At the beginning of the twentieth century, neither the tonal experiments of the time nor the radical rejection of neo romanticism detracted from the splendour and popularity of his compositions. Active both as pianist and composer, he shunned the musical avant-garde, as well as Parisian and Viennese novelties, and remained true to Romantic ideas and nineteenth-century aesthetics. His contemporaries praised his performance highly, while the greatest celebrities of the musical world, such as Liszt or Hanslick, applauded his compositions, in particular his concertos and piano miniatures. History, however, moves in mysterious ways, and for some strange reason his work was forgotten for many years. His compositions may have proved too difficult for many a performer, and audiences expected musical novelties. For these reasons Scharwenka's works fell into neglect. Although in recent years there has been something of a renaissance of his music, it still enters concert halls (and attracts music lovers' attention) rather slowly and timidly.
Franz Xaver began piano studies with Theodor Kullak at the Neue Akademie der Tonkunst. At the same time he started composition classes with Richard Wilerst. As a pianist, he made his debut in 1867 with Mendelssohn's Concerto in D minor, and two years later had his own composition, Orchesterouvertiire (Orchestral Overture) performed publicly for the first time. Initially Scharwenka made a name for himself as a pianist, performing concertos by Schumann, Mendelssohn, Chopin and Liszt. Success as a composer soon followed. In 1869, Breitkopf and Hartel published three of his compositions, including Polish National Dance, Op. 3, No. 1, which quickly found recognition throughout the musical world.

Scharwenka's most outstanding and most popular compositions are four piano concertos, works which made him famous as a composer and pianist on both sides of the Atlantic. The Concerto in F minor, is Scharwenka's last piano concerto. It crowns his experience of the form, and appears to be his final "coming to terms" with piano music, for the technical demands of the solo part reach the apex of performance skills, particularly in the outermost movements. The massive texture of the piano part based on octave repetitions and bravura passages, as well as sequences of broken chords in octaves, and virtuoso cadenzas covering the entire sound range of the instrument create an impression that the composer wanted to embrace the entire history of the form, as well as summarise achievements of the pianism of the time in a single composition. From the stylistic point of view, the concerto is an eclectic piece, which combines elements typical of brillante concertos with those typical of Mendelssohn's, Liszt's and Tchaikovsky's works.” (from album notes by Marlena Gnatowicz)

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