Ferdinand Ries - Piano Concerto No. 9, Op. 177 (1833)

Ferdinand Ries (28 November 1784 [baptised] – 13 January 1838) was a German composer. Ries was a friend, pupil and secretary of Ludwig van Beethoven. He composed eight symphonies, a violin concerto, eight piano concertos, three operas, and numerous other works in many genres, including 26 string quartets. In 1838 he published a collection of reminiscences of his teacher Beethoven, co-written with Franz Wegeler. The symphonies, some chamber works —most of them with piano— his violin concerto and his piano concertos have been recorded, demonstrating a style which is, unsurprising due to his connection to Beethoven, somewhere between those of the Classical and early Romantic eras. Piano Concerto No. 9 in G minor, Op. 177. Dedicated to Monsieur le Comte Etienne de Fáy (poss. 1770-1845) 1. Allegro 2. Larghetto con moto 3. Rondo. Allegro. Christopher Hinterhuber, piano and New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Uwe Grodd Details by Richard Wigmore By the time he composed the piano concerto No 9 in G minor, Op 177, around 1832–33 (the exact date is unkown), Ries and his wife had moved from Bad Godesberg to Frankfurt am Main. By then his star as a virtuoso performer had faded, though he conducted his own and other composers’ works at the Lower Rhine Music Festivals, and still occasionally played in public. To judge by the technical challenges of this, his last concerto, Ries had lost none of his former dexterity. Musically, too, the concerto, scored for the same forces (without oboes) as the A flat concerto, is no less inventive than its predecessor. The first movement, darker in mood and colouring than its predecessor, initially seems to be in B flat, with a four-note ‘tapping’ figure on pizzicato strings that sounds like a homage to Beethoven’s violin concerto. Woodwind then gently establish the ‘proper’ key of G minor with the plaintive main theme. A second theme, proposed by the strings and repeated evocatively on the horns, turns out to be a variant of the first. Many of the ploys used effectively in the A flat concerto recur here, including the dramatic entry of the soloist (at the apex of an orchestral crescendo), and the introduction of a new, romantically lyrical theme in the development. The powerful modulating sequences that follow this theme suggest the ‘romantic wildness’ noted in the Harmonicon’s review of Ries’s playing. Opening with a fortissimo statement of the main theme, the recapitulation is even more radically compressed than its counterpart in the A flat concerto—further confirmation that Ries was minimally concerned with the Classical proportions of Mozart and Beethoven. The music quickly brightens, via the initial tapping motif, from G minor to G major, and remains there for the rest of its course. Like the slow movement of the A flat concerto, the larghetto con moto in D major is a richly ornamented romantic nocturne, with the piano’s delicate filigree subtly coloured by woodwind and horns. This is bel canto opera by other means. At the movement’s centre the rapt mood is disturbed by a series of rhetorical exchanges between keyboard and orchestra, beginning in the far-flung key of E flat. The music gradually ebbs in a shimmer of keyboard figuration. The rondo then bursts in with a theatrical crescendo, followed by playful keyboard flourishes, before the full orchestra announces the Hungarian-style main theme. From here on the movement follows a pattern similar to its counterpart in ‘Gruss an den Rhein’: a new lyric theme in the first episode, a romantically flexible piano cantabile in slower tempo for the second, delicately glossed by flutes and clarinets. Throughout the movement the mercurial piano figuration flits and glints through a kaleidoscopic range of keys, before the coda finally settles in G major. Here Ries whips up the tempo and caps his bravura exploits with a display of rapid semiquavers in octaves and thirds—the kind of piano texture pioneered by Clementi and Dussek, and pushed here to a new level of brilliance. Ries numbered his Violin Concerto as #1, his first piano concerto as #2 and so on.