Romantic Piano Favourites, Vol. 3

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Romantic Piano Favourites-Volumes 3The third collection of Romantic PianoFavourites contains a popular mixture of well known pieces, starting with an Air and Variations from a harpsichordsuite by Handel that enjoyed particular favour in a more romantic guise, underthe title The Harmonious Blacksmith.In fact the strokes of the blacksmith's hammer were not its inspiration, thelegend of the work's inception being entirely posthumous.Beethoven's piano sonatas offer a formidableanthology of the composer's own developing style in writing for the piano, oncedescribed by a critic as the New Testament to the Old Testament of JohannSebastian Bach's 48 Preludes and Fugues.The Andante in F, known as the Andante favori, was originally intended asthe slow movement of the famous sonata dedicated to Count Waldstein, an earlypatron, through whose agency Beethoven had been introduced to the attention ofpolite society in Vienna, on his arrival there in 1792. The movement waswritten in 1803 and published in Vienna two years later.Dvorak, the son of a village inn-keeper andbutcher in Bohemia, forsook the family business to become a major figure inEuropean music in the later 19th century. As a composer he was never far awayfrom the national source of his inspiration, and it was the success of his Moravian Dances, published by Simrock atthe request of Brahms, that led to a commission for a set of Slavonic Dances for piano duet, of whichOpus 46 No.1 was the first.An important figure in the life of Dvorak wasJohannes Brahms, who had left his native Hamburg to settle in Vienna in 1863,establishing himself, in the eyes of many, as the successor of Beethoven, muchto the annoyance of Richard Wagner and his followers, who saw the music of thefuture in very different terms. Brahms himself was a pianist of some ability,although critics were later to praise rather the musical thought than thetechnique of his performance. The sixteen Waltzesthat make up his Opus 39 were written in 1863, with aversion for piano duet andan arrangement for solo piano. The work was dedicated to the critic EduardHanslick, a strong supporter of Brahms, portrayed by Wagner in Die Meistersinger as Beckmesser.Schumann paid due respect to Vienna, where hehad once briefly hoped to make a name of himself, as his future wife Clara haddone with her remarkable piano playing. The story of Schumann's marriage,against the opposition of Clara's father, has appealed to the romanticimagination, although subsequent events and the composer's insanity and earlydeath may suggest that Friedrich Wieck was exercising mere common prudence inprohibiting his daughter's marriage. The Albumfor the Young was written in 1848, eight years after Schumann'smarriage, at a time ofpolitical disturbance in Dresden, where the couple had made their home. In thespace of a fortnight he wrote some 43 little pieces, to supply a general needfor music of good quality for young players, and more specifically for the twoeldest of his four children