Xaver Scharwenka - Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor

- Composer: Franz Xaver Scharwenka (6 January 1850 -- 8 December 1924) - Orchestra: Hamburg Symphony Orchestra - Conductor: Richard Kapp - Soloist: Michael Ponti - Year of recording: 1969-1971 Concerto for piano & orchestra No. 2 in C Minor, Op. 56, written in 1881. 00:00 - I. Allegro 17:19 - II. Adagio 25:53 - III. Allegro non troppo When he returned to the genre in 1881, with the Second Piano Concerto in C minor, Scharwenka seemed stylistically to be taking a step back. The concerto has less rhetorical and lyrical sweep than its predecessor and more of a conservative hue. - The figure of Brahms looms large, not only in the scale of the first movement – at almost twenty minutes, it constitutes half of the concerto – but also in the greater muscularity of the solo part and the more conventional interchanges between soloist and orchestra. The piano writing is more challenging too, made weightier by the doubling of its lines in sixths, another Brahmsian trai