Johann Nepomuk Hummel's Piano Concerto No. 2 in A minor, Op. 85 was written in 1816 and published in Vienna in 1821.Mikio Tao, Works Catalogue of Hummel, (pdf)

Unlike his earlier piano concerti, which closely followed the model of Mozart's, it is written in a proto-Romantic style that anticipates the later stylistic developments of composers such as Frédéric Chopin, Franz Liszt and Felix Mendelssohn.MF Humphries, The Piano Concertos of Johann Nepomuk Hummel Dissertation (Northwestern University, 1957) In this regard, it is similar to the slightly later Piano Concerto No. 3. It was considered a showpiece of its time by pianists such as Robert Schumann. Music The concerto is scored for piano, flute, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, timpani, and strings.

The work is composed in traditional three-movement form. There is a solo transition in the second movement leading into the rondo without pause.

Influence Although Hummel's music, seen as essentially Mozartian in style, had fallen out of fashion by the 1830s, the A minor concerto nonetheless exercised considerable influence over a number of works that helped to usher in the Romantic style. Frédéric Chopin, who had played the Hummel concerti, drew from elements of the A minor concerto in his own piano concerti.Chopin: The Piano Concertos, John Rink, Cambridge University Press, 1997, , pp. 59 & 65.

Musicologist Mark Kroll has suggested that Chopin's piano concerti in general were influenced by those of Hummel. The A minor concerto da camera of Charles-Valentin Alkan has also been noted for its debt to Hummel's style of writing for the keyboard.Structural Novelty and Tradition in the Early Romantic Piano Concerto, p.116

While Robert Schumann was critical of much of Hummel's work as a composer,Mark Kroll, Johann Nepomuk Hummel: A Musician's Life and World, Rowman & Littlefield, 2007, , pp. 275-78 he had made a close study of the A minor concerto in 1828Schumann, Hummel, and "The Clarity of a Well-Planned Composition", Eric Frederick Jensen, Studia Musicologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, T. 40, Fasc. 1/3 (1999), pp. 59- 70 and considered it one of the works (along with the F minor piano sonata) of his "heyday".NZfM, 1840, Schumann, "Concertstücke und Concerte für Pianoforte" p. 39 "...ein Werk aus seiner Blüthenzeit, der das A-moll-Konzert..." And in his own A minor concerto, Schumann makes reference to aspects of Hummel's virtuosic style.Macdonald, Claudia. "Schumann's earliest compositions and performances." Journal of Musicological Research 7.2-3 (1987): 259-283, PAGE NUMBER & DOI MISSING

Recordings

1987 – Hummel: Piano Concertos, Stephen Hough, English Chamber Orchestra, Bryden Thomson.Chandos, 1987, CHAN 8507

References

Further reading M.F. Humphries, The Piano Concertos of Johann Nepomuk Hummel, PhD Dissertation (Northwestern University, 1957) B.H. Kim, Johann Nepomuk Hummel and His Contribution to Piano Music and the Art of Playing the Piano (University of Rochester, 1967)

External links