Allegro de Concert, pour le Piano, dédié à Mademlle. F. Muller, de Vienne... Op: 46. Prix 7f. 50. [Leipzig: Breitkopf et Haertel... Londres: Wessel et Stapelton]. Folio. Disbound. 1f. (title), [i] (blank), 2-15, [i] (blank) pp. Engraved. [PN] M.S. 3481. Publisher's facsimile signature handstamp to lower right corner of title; inscribed lower left in ink from the violinist Walter Edelstein, "To Victor and Rita From Walter Edelstein Dec./ 33." Left edge reinforced with green paper, light foxing to cover edges, heavy foxing internally throughout. Grabowski-Rink 46–1a-Sm. Chomiński-Turło p. 70. Kobylańska (German) p. 105. Not in Hoboken.
This rare edition was once a gift from Walter Edelstein (1903 - 1992), noted violinist, violist and composer born in Brooklyn, New York, who was with the New York Symphony Orchestra in the 1920s and went on to record with some of the biggest names in jazz and pop, including many with Dizzy Gillespie, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Ella Fitzgerald and Judy Garland.
Chopin's Allegro de concert, Op. 46, has a curious place in the Chopin canon, and while its history is obscure, the evidence supports the view, shared by Robert Schumann and others, that it started out as the first movement of a projected third piano concerto, of which the orchestral parts are either now non-existent or were never scored at all. There is no evidence that Chopin ever even started work on the latter movements of this concerto.
The work includes certain devices which reflect a more virtuosic technique than that required by most of his other works. Technical difficulties include dense musical textures, complex and light finger work, massive leaps of left hand chords, trills and scales in double notes, and difficult octaves, and for this reason, it is considered one of Chopin's most difficult pieces.
Chopin himself seems to have been very proud of it, telling Aleksander Hoffmann: "This is the very first piece I shall play in my first concert upon returning home to a free Warsaw". But Chopin never returned to Warsaw, and it is perhaps for this reason that there is no record of him ever playing it in public. In fact, there seems to be no record of its first public performance at all.
Allegro de Concert, pour le Piano, dédié à Mademlle. F. Muller, de Vienne... Op: 46. Prix 7f. 50. [Leipzig: Breitkopf et Haertel... Londres: Wessel et Stapelton]. Folio. Disbound. 1f. (title), [i] (blank), 2-15, [i] (blank) pp. Engraved. [PN] M.S. 3481. Publisher's facsimile signature handstamp to lower right corner of title; inscribed lower left in ink from the violinist Walter Edelstein, "To Victor and Rita From Walter Edelstein Dec./ 33." Left edge reinforced with green paper, light foxing to cover edges, heavy foxing internally throughout. Grabowski-Rink 46–1a-Sm. Chomiński-Turło p. 70. Kobylańska (German) p. 105. Not in Hoboken.
This rare edition was once a gift from Walter Edelstein (1903 - 1992), noted violinist, violist and composer born in Brooklyn, New York, who was with the New York Symphony Orchestra in the 1920s and went on to record with some of the biggest names in jazz and pop, including many with Dizzy Gillespie, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Ella Fitzgerald and Judy Garland.
Chopin's Allegro de concert, Op. 46, has a curious place in the Chopin canon, and while its history is obscure, the evidence supports the view, shared by Robert Schumann and others, that it started out as the first movement of a projected third piano concerto, of which the orchestral parts are either now non-existent or were never scored at all. There is no evidence that Chopin ever even started work on the latter movements of this concerto.
The work includes certain devices which reflect a more virtuosic technique than that required by most of his other works. Technical difficulties include dense musical textures, complex and light finger work, massive leaps of left hand chords, trills and scales in double notes, and difficult octaves, and for this reason, it is considered one of Chopin's most difficult pieces.
Chopin himself seems to have been very proud of it, telling Aleksander Hoffmann: "This is the very first piece I shall play in my first concert upon returning home to a free Warsaw". But Chopin never returned to Warsaw, and it is perhaps for this reason that there is no record of him ever playing it in public. In fact, there seems to be no record of its first public performance at all.