The Piano Concerto No. 3 in E minor "Ballade", Op. 60, was one of Nikolai Medtner's last major compositions, completed in 1943, when he was 63.
Contents
Background
The Third Concerto was commissioned by the pianist Benno Moiseiwitsch, who had been an early champion of Medtner.
Privately, Medtner said that the first movement was inspired by Mikhail Lermontov's ballad Rusalka, about a water-nymph whose seductive advances fail to arouse a sleeping knight. He extended Lermontov's poem for the remaining movements: The knight (personifying the human spirit) awakens and sings a song that turns into a hymn, symbolizing his triumph over temptation and his achievement of redemption and eternal life.
Medtner and his wife Anna were living in London when the Blitz began in earnest in September 1940. His devoted champion, the English pianist Edna Iles, had moved to her parents' home in the Birmingham suburb of Moseley, and the Medtners came to stay there too. After the house was bombed, they moved with the Ileses to the Worcestershire village of Wythall. Later they moved to a secluded house near Wootton Wawen, not far from Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire. It was in this succession of rural surroundings that the Third Concerto was finished.
One day, Medtner gave Edna Iles the manuscript of the first movement, telling her he had never before revealed a part of a work before it was complete. The two practised the work on two pianos, and when it was complete, he presented her with the entire score. The Medtners returned to London in April 1943.
He dedicated the Third Concerto to Jayachamarajendra Wadiyar Bahadur, the Maharajah of Mysore, an Indian prince who had supported Medtner and founded the Medtner Society, devoted to the recording of all his major works with the composer himself playing the piano parts. The dedication was inscribed "with deep gratitude for the appreciation and furtherance of my work".
The premiere of the Third Concerto took place in the Royal Albert Hall on 19 February 1944, with Sir Adrian Boult conducting, and the composer at the piano. He continued to make recordings until his health failed two years before his 1951 death, but 1944 was the last year in which he performed in public, and this occasion was one of his last appearances.
After his death, the Third Concerto was played in a tribute concert conducted by Anatole Fistoulari; at Anna Medtner's request, the New Zealand-born pianist Colin Horsley (who also posthumously premiered the Piano Quintet) was the soloist.
The Ukrainian pianist Dmitry Paperno, who was aged only 22 when Medtner died, was offered the opportunity by Medtner's widow of giving the Russian premiere of the Third Concerto, but turned it down.
Composition
The work is sub-titled "Ballade", and is constructed as one movement sub-divided into three sub-movements, although the central Interludium is very short, lasting less than two minutes. The whole work lasts about 36 minutes.
Medtner was never happy writing for the orchestra; he found it difficult and tedious, and his three concertos are the only three of his over 60 published works that involved the orchestra at all. The scoring of the Third Concerto is for:
Recordings
There have been seven recordings of the work to date, starting with the composer’s own account in 1947: