Even 37 years later the Hummel concertos recorded by the young Stephen Hough need no help with either availability or advertising. But I’m in to this concerto at the moment, and so I’m going to force it upon you once more. Alongside Op.113 and the remarkable Op.85 this is my favourite among Hummel’s compositions, and in particular it has one of my favourite piano entrances in the entire concerto literature. That drum call in the distance... turning the scene from major to minor like a magic wand. And indeed the pages of the musical world from classicism to romanticism by the same stroke. The concerto has a rare, German kind of romanticism - of tale and legend - which can be found more in literature and painting otherwise than in music. Although there is Weber’s Konzertstück of course. And Henselt, from a tad later.

As ever with Hummel the concerto as a whole however is low on narrative and the ability to speak through music in a coherent way, leaving large portions of it an abstract collection of ear candy of unclear direction and purpose - other than to simply please, delight, and engage while the performance lasts. But when the simple beauty of tones is turned in to such elevated art as in his concertos, that ambition is not one to belittle. Consider this report from an anonymous Vienna critic who heard Hummel in free improvisation in 1827, which, aside from being one of the most exuberant texts in all of music criticism, also gives an idea of what was at the heart of Hummel’s way with music:

“But what can one say about the improvisation itself? That one will certainly never hear anything more splendid of the kind! This abundance of thought, this richness of forms, these brilliant passages, this sure command of the most intricate figures in a constantly surprising shifting of harmonies with undisturbed clarity, bright comprehensibility, resemble an ever changing panorama of paradisiacal landscapes at which the sunlight from a clear, cloudless sky magically shifts the colour tones before the astonished eyes. The stream of thought never stops for a moment, never becomes thinner, but showers over the listener as if from a magical cascade, from which a sky-rising stream of nectar in a rainbow of scents flow past in the wondrous figures of a fata morgana of sound. The most artistic setting of the loveliest themes in all vocal registers, the most interesting imitations, and the most surprising harmony sequences form such a complete whole in Hummel’s fantasy, as if it had been studied in the most careful manner and practised for a long, long time to complete security; Hummel’s fantasy is the most perfect thing one can hear in the art of improvisation.”

Hummel was not only a magician of tones, enveloping his listeners in a kaleidoscopic world of pearls, gold and diamonds at a time when few had them, but also a virtuoso the like of which the world had not yet seen in his day. I suppose the danger/reward ratio of playing such a difficult work live as the present composition has been too high for pianists once the style fell out of fashion, but I can’t help finding it remarkable that not a single musician of note over the past 130 years appears to have taken it to the concert halls. Not Hough either, as far as I’m aware, who I’ve only spotted playing the A minor live.

In the 19th century on the other hand it struck a chord with the romantic generation. Within 15 years of its publication it had been taken up not only by Hummel himself, but by such notables as Maria Szymanowska, Franz Liszt, George Aspull, Sigismund Thalberg, Marie Pleyel and Charles-Valentin Alkan (possibly Fryderyk Chopin too, who might have performed it at Warsaw's Blue Palace in March 1823). Even Liszt’s daughter Cosima worked on it during her short career as pianist, to the moderate amusement of her father, and Alkan thought highly enough of it to revive it - twice - for his series of ‘Petit Concerts de Musique Classique’ in the 1870s. Twenty years on Vladimir de Pachmann was still playing it, who must have done it either absolutely abominably or completely formidably amazingly... because to my knowledge, his performances of it during the 1893/1894 season, was the very last time a leading pianist played it in concert. And so a work which came from the dawn of romanticism, also died with its dusk.

Except in our living rooms then, where thanks to the splendid work by Thomson and Hough it is still possible to step into the enchanted world Hummel created with his concertos. And so, now..... as for me........ that drum, please.


Johann Nepomuk Hummel (1778-1837)
Piano Concerto No.3 in B minor, Op.89 (1819)
00:00 – I. Allegro moderato
16:55 – II. Larghetto
24:48 – III. Finale: Vivace

Stephen Hough, piano
Bryden Thomson / English Chamber Orchestra

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