Progetto Martha Argerich

italiano

Works

Mily Balakirev

Concerto No. 2 in E flat min.

 

Mili Balakirev began to sketch his Concerto No. 2 in E-flat Major for piano and orchestra in 1861; he completed the whole first movement in 1862, at which time he played it for his friends Mussorgsky and Rimsky- Korsakov and then improvised for them the following two movements. Later, however, Balakirev set the piece aside and did not return to it until more than forty years later, in 1906, when he completed only the second movement. After Balakirev’s death, in 1910, Sergei Liapunov, one of his most faithful pupils, finished the third movement in accordance with the wishes of his colleague and friend. Despite having been written over a span of nearly fifty years, the composition indubitably demonstrates stylistic unity. It is in the florid style of the magniloquent, grandiose late-nineteenth-century piano concerto, and it requires extreme virtuosity of the performer.

1. Allegro non troppo
2. Adagio
3. Allegro risoluto

Performers

Performance