BEETHOVEN 200 YEARS AGO TODAY: Friday, November 12, 1824
Today, a pianist and composer named Carl Schwenke visits Beethoven. Schwenke had previously written to Beethoven in 1822 asking for something in his handwriting (Brandenburg Letter 1500) Beethoven finally got around to granting his request on this visit. Schwenke noted in his memoirs, “[Beethoven] received me very kindly, and as soon as I told him my name, he remembered the letter I had written him a few years ago, and that he still owed me an answer to it. After I assured him that I had come to Vienna to get it, he promised me a manuscript, and added that he would be happy to help me wherever he could.” Schwenke, Memoirs p.52f. Schwenke will return to Beethoven in a few days to collect his memento.
Today’s Wiener Zeitung (Nr.261) at 1100 contains a very large advertisement by S.A. Steiner & Co. of the Complete Works of Mozart for piano, piano four hands, and as accompaniment. The volumes released so far in this newest Vienna edition are six books of piano sonatas, a dozen volumes of duets for piano and violin, three books of works for piano four hands, one volume of works for two pianos, four books of piano trios, three books of piano quartets, a volume for piano and winds, a book of smaller piano pieces, and four volumes of piano variations. Two volumes of songs with piano accompaniment round out the 38 volumes being offered. Beethoven likely had this edition in mind as he contemplated the publication of his own Collected Works.
The newest works by Carl Czerny are advertised on the same page of the Wiener Zeitung. These are three easy concert pieces for piano, op.78, with accompaniment by two violins, viola and violoncello obbligato; also flute and two French horns (ad libitum). The three pieces are an Allegro, an Andantino and Allegretto with Variations, and a Rondo alla Polacca.
The notes (as usual, probably written by Czerny himself) state, “The title sufficiently indicates the purpose and nature of this little work. The desire and need for an easy and brilliant concerto to be produced for advanced students and less perfected fortepiano players has been expressed so widely by the strong demand that the publisher can offer this concerto, which was inspired by them, as a welcome publication to the larger musical public and especially to piano players. The three pieces that make up the whole form a complete concerto, but each piece is also sold individually.”
These three pieces are today considered to be a single piano concertino. Czerny’s Concertino in C major op.78 is performed here by Rosemary Tuck on piano, accompanied by the English Chamber Orchestra conducted by Richard Bonynge: