Concerto

A concerto (from the Italian: concerto, plural concerti or, often, the anglicised form concertos) is a musical composition, whose characteristics have changed over time. In the 17th century, "sacred works for voices and orchestra were typically called concertos." J. S. Bach "was thus reflecting a long-standing tradition when he used the title `concerto' for many of the works that we know as cantatas.". But in recent centuries, up to the present, a concerto is a piece usually composed in three parts or movements, in which (usually) one solo instrument (for instance, a piano, violin, cello or flute) is accompanied by an orchestra or concert band.

The etymology is uncertain, but the word seems to have originated from the conjunction of the two Latin words conserere (meaning to tie, to join, to weave) and certamen (competition, fight): the idea is that the two parts in a concerto, the soloist and the orchestra or concert band, alternate episodes of opposition, cooperation, and independence in the creation of the music flow.

Piano concerto

A piano concerto is a concerto written for a piano accompanied by an orchestra or other large ensemble.

Keyboard concerti were common in the time of Johann Sebastian Bach. Occasionally, Bach's harpsichord concerti are played on piano.

History

In the 17th and 18th centuries, typical concertos for keyboard were organ concertos and harpsichord concertos, such as those written by George Friedrich Handel and Johann Sebastian Bach.

Classical and romantic

As the piano developed and became accepted, composers naturally started writing concerti for it. This happened in the late 18th century, during the Classical music era. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was the most important composer in the early development of the form. Mozart's body of masterly piano concerti put his stamp firmly on the genre well into the Romantic era.

Mozart wrote many piano concertos for himself to perform (his 27 piano concertos also include concerti for two and three pianos). With the rise of the piano virtuoso, many composer-pianists did likewise, notably Ludwig van Beethoven, Frédéric Chopin, and Robert Schumann—and also lesser-known musicians like Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Joseph Wölfl, Carl Maria von Weber, John Field, Ferdinand Ries, and F. X. Mozart.

Anna Fedorova

Anna Fedorova (born 27 February 1990) is a Ukrainian concert pianist.

Biography

Fedorova was born in Kiev, Ukrainian SSR, into a family of musicians, and began playing the piano at age five. She gave her first public recital when she was six, and she gave her national debut at the age of 7, at the National Philharmonic Society of Ukraine.

Fedorova has given concerts in various halls across Europe, North America, and South America, including performances at the Concertgebouw in the Netherlands, the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico, and the Teatro Colón in Argentina. She has won 14 international piano competitions, including First Prize at the International Rubinstein in Memoriam piano competition in Poland, in 2009.

In 2008, she graduated from the Lysenko Musical College for Gifted Children. She is currently a student of Norma Fisher at the Royal College of Music in London and additionally studies with Leonid Margarius at the Accademia Pianistica Incontri col Maestro in Imola, Italy.

Concerto in D (Stravinsky)

Igor Stravinsky's Concerto in D ("Basle") for string orchestra was composed in Hollywood between the beginning of 1946 and 8 August of the same year in response to a 1946 commission from Paul Sacher to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the Basler Kammerorchester (BKO—in English, Basel Chamber Orchestra), and for this reason is sometimes referred to as the "Basle" Concerto ("Basle" being the French form of the city's name). It was premiered on 27 January 1947 in Basel by the BKO, conducted by Paul Sacher (Gritten 2003, xii; Walsh 2001; White 1979, 438). Other sources say it was six days earlier, on the day of the orchestra's twentieth anniversary, 21 January (Anon. 2012; Stephenson and Weed 2002, 348), when two other works commissioned by Sacher were also premiered: Arthur Honegger's Symphony No. 4 Deliciae Basiliensis and Bohuslav Martinů's Toccata e due Canzoni (Ford 2002; Halbreich 1999, 325).

The Concerto in D was the first composition Stravinsky created after becoming a naturalised American citizen on 28 December 1945, and was also the first of his works to be published under the contract with his new publisher, Boosey & Hawkes (White 1979, 123–25).