Ferdinand Ries - Piano Concerto No. 8, Op. 151 (1826)

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. 8 in A-flat major, Op. 151 “Grüss an den Rhein“. Bad Godesberg, 1826 Dedication: Godefroi Weber (perhaps Gottfried Weber) I. Allegro con moto (0:00) II. Larghetto con moto (12:51) III. Rondo: Allegro molto (17:46) Christopher Hinterhuber, piano and New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Uwe Grodd By the time he left London in 1824, initially to settle in Bad Godesberg, near Bonn, Ries had composed six symphonies, reams of chamber and solo piano music, a violin concerto and six piano concertos. The last of these, premiered shortly before his departure, appeared under the title ‘Abschieds-Concert von London’ (‘Farewell Concerto to London’). Two years later Ries celebrated his return to the Rhineland with his piano concerto No 8 in A flat, Op 151, published in 1827 with the subtitle ‘Gruss an den Rhein’—‘Greeting to the Rhine’. (This should really be No 7, but the inclusion of the violin concerto as ‘No 1’ skewed the numbering system of Ries’s piano concertos.) Although Beethoven seems to have remained fond of Ries, he was once allegedly heard to mutter of his former pupil, ‘He imitates me too much’. He might have had a point with Ries’s early symphonies and concertos. There are occasional Beethovenian gestures and turns of phrase in the two concertos on this record, both late works. Yet the music rarely sounds Beethovenian. Ries’s forms, though superficially modelled on Beethoven’s (including long orchestral introductions to the first movements), are far less rigorously symphonic. Tension comes not from tonal conflict and the cumulative development of thematic cells but from flamboyantly ‘modern’ piano figuration evocative of Hummel, Field and the young Chopin. Long-range drama is replaced by a delight in momentary sensation, a relishing of dazzling keyboard fireworks for their own sake. Like Robert Schumann’s symphony celebrating the Rhineland a quarter of a century later, ‘Gruss an den Rhein’ is an essentially euphoric work. Contemporaries remarked on Ries’s inventive use of woodwind, with good reason. The concerto omits the pungent-toned oboes, and gives special prominence to the mellow colouring of flutes, clarinets and horns (Mozart had done likewise in his E flat concerto, K482). There is an unmissable reference to the first movement of the ‘Eroica’ in the discordant fortissimo chords near the end of the orchestral introduction. But from the gracefully lilting opening theme (whose first four notes permeate much of the movement), the first movement exudes a sense of well-being, spiced by Ries’s trademark love of colourful harmonic deflections. Not for nothing did the London Harmonicon praise the ‘great boldness in his modulations’.