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Hello everyone,

This is going to be similar to the "Sonata Analysis" thread that has been going on in the Adult Beginners forum, except we will be looking at piano concertos instead of solo repertoire, and we are hoping to get into more advanced, in-depth analysis of the pieces we examine. And hopefully we can stay on topic a little bit more than in the other thread.

Wonderful! I'm in. Any particular concerto(s) you have in mind?

I'm opening it up for suggestions. Let's just not try to start on a colossal work like the Busoni concerto for the first one we analyze.

I heard Daniil Trifonov play the Tschaikovsky First Piano Concerto last fall, so that's my current concerto love at the moment. But I'm up for anything.

What do you mean by analysis? What are you looking for?

BTW seems like you want to sort of run a course, but you're not saying what it is!

(Many of us don't much see that other section and so we don't know what you're referring to over there.)

Here's an idea - let's do two concerti: Beethoven 3 and Rachmaninoff 2.

They're both popular, very different in style, but there are a great deal of similarities between the two that I think would be very interesting to explore in detail. Scores are available on IMSLP (we'd have to agree on which ones to use exactly so we can reference page and rehearsal numbers.)

I don't particularly understand this thing that you are doing, but it sounds interesting, a suggestion is/are the Liszt piano concertos, or a Mozart concerto?

Wonderful suggestions. In the Beethoven, I am particularly a fan of the transition back into C minor after the end of the cadenza in the first movement. Sheer magic with simple means.

We've been looking at various pieces over in the ABF. The current thread, Classical Sonata Analysis, was started out to look at sonatas and sonata form, but we have looked at non-sonatas there too.

We use various tools to understand how the music is put together and how it achieves its effects. We look at a variety of features of the work including (but not limited to) harmony, melody, themes and their transformations, and form. Without fully knowing what polyphonist would like to do here, I imagine this thread would be similar.

Similar, but more advanced. Richard had a little too much going on in the other one, and overloaded his "students" with information, which may have been right or wrong.
So, if you are not a fairly good pianist with a strong understanding of theory and harmony, this thread is not for you most likely.

I'd like to combine some suggestions that have been put in here and the two concertos we start with will be

Chopin 2 (F minor) and Rachmaninoff 2 (C minor).

Please stay on the topic of these two concerti. Preferably, in any one post, begin with the first movement and work through however much of the concerto you would like to, responding to previous questions/comments or presenting new information.

We have found it helpful in the other thread to put the work and movement number at the start of each post, in bold.

"Fairly good pianist with a strong understanding of theory and harmony"... I guess I'm going to find out if I measure up!

Polyphonist, are we going to work through both concerti at the same time? Do you have a preferred score from imslp for us to work from, or use any score?

In reply to PianoStudent88: Very good questions. Everyone participating should read this, as it will contain important information.

Yes, we will do 2 at once. More than that would be too confusing, while only having 1 might exclude someone who really didn't like one of the concertos for whatever reason, but with 2 there is another one for them to participate in.

About scores: I'm going to be using my Henle Urtext 2 piano reduction edition for the Chopin, and Boosey & Hawkes for the Rachmaninov. But any score should be fine.

For the Rachmaninov, your score should have rehearsal marks. Bar numbers for that concerto will be referred to according the rehearsal marks: for example, R11+6 means six bars after rehearsal mark 11.

For the Chopin, we're going to use absolute bar numbers, counting from the beginning of the movement being referred to, as is normal. If your score or the one you print off the Internet doesn't have them, I'd recommend writing them in, and then checking to make sure your totals for each movement match the ones I have here:

1st movement: 348 bars
2nd movement: 97 bars
3rd movement: 514 bars

If you recheck it and still get a different number, contact me via personal message and we can discuss the issue.

Anyway, sorry if I sounded like a control freak in that post.
Have fun!

An ambitious undertaking!

Hopefully the generally higher standard of knowledge on this forum will enable it, where the beginners on the other one slackened the pace to 1.

Rachmaninoff 2nd Concerto, mvt. I

Here's a quick sketch:

Opening - Piano introduction on f minor. (Just a quick mention now, but this stuff becomes important later.)

R1 - C minor, Exposition, First Thematic Area
First theme begins in the orchestra with piano accompaniment.

R2 - Transition
A second phrase in the exposition with continued piano accompaniment. The opening of the phrase at R2 emphasizes the subdominant chord (which we heard in the piano introduction) and a fortissimo climax emphasizes a Neapolitan (Db7) chord. (Db also being a rather important note in the piano introduction.)

R3 - More Transition!
The piano finally gets a melody! It's the same melody that the orchestra has at R2, but shorter and propels the piano into some virtuoso figuration. The opening motive of the orchestra part at R1 (CDCDC) appears in the piano leading into R4, which takes us to the 2nd thematic area of our sonata form.

R4+8 - Eb Major (relative major), Second Thematic Area
The second thematic area is presented in the piano. It's in Eb Major and it's pretty. Note that the theme is a first inversion major triad with a whole step (G-Bb-Eb-F) and then a neighbor note thing (G-Ab-G.) This is important because...

R6 - Moment of Genius
Here we have some counterpoint. The orchestra begins and the piano follows. The melody in the piano consists of the two motives I mentioned in reverse order. We have a neighbor figure (this time C-Db-C) soon followed by a first inversion major triad with a whole step (this time D-F-Bb-C). Also clever is that the first inversion thing appears as accompaniment in the orchestra at R6+10, but augmented (in half notes instead of quarters.) Beethoven and Brahms are often credited as being masters of this kind of motivic efficiency, but Rachmaninoff could easily hold his own.

R6+16 (the un poco piu mosso) - Closing Theme
The exposition ends with this closing theme, in Eb Major. It has all the hallmarks of a classical closing theme. It's short, repetitive, and cadential. More motivic economy in the orchestra part - we get the same orchestra figure that opened the 2nd thematic area (G-C-B-Ab-G...) and the first theme from the exposition! (CDCDC, transposed here to EbFEbFEb...) Now it's time for...

R7 - The Development (sort of)
The development could be seen in two different places. It could start here, where the G7 harmony destabilizes the Eb Major second theme. Or it could be seen as starting at the Moto precedente (On a C7 chord.) Both make sense. I like how the rhythm of the opening theme from the exposition (dotted half - quarter) makes an appearance in the orchestra, and I like how the piano figuration in the two bars before the moto precedente is reminiscent of the piano accompaniment from the opening theme of the movement. Again - a nice bit of compositional economy from Rachmaninoff. (Who, like Beethoven and Brahms, constantly transforms and disguises his material so that it sounds familiar and interesting without being repetitive or monotonous.)

The development is a can o' worms, so I'll leave it for later. I hope that gives everyone enough to chew on for now...

so that's my current concerto love at the moment.

Thanks for the big overview Kreisler. Enjoyed reading your insight into the contrapuntal textures and economy employed by Rachmaninov.



Seems like a rather gross understatement to me... It's arguably one of the most beautiful melodies ever composed.

Cool! Mind telling us a little bit about the process of learning it?

The other forum is a learning forum ("beginner" is a misnomer) and the purpose there was to learn the concepts via analysis. I assume the decision to bring concerto analysis in this section was in order to look at concertos, rather than to learn about concerto form. It might be interesting at some point to do the same in the ABF, but with learning about concertos as the goal. In this forum one would assume that everyone knows what concertos are about, and so the interest is in the works themselves. I don't think that the standards are higher - the knowledge base and purpose are different.

It will be interesting to watch. It's a different angle.

That's all part of why I didn't know what was being asked for.

I like clarity.