‘Risoluto’
Despite setback after setback, Stanford was determined to hear his music played in public.
1916
King Edward VII 1901-1910 to King George V 1910-1936
Despite setback after setback, Stanford was determined to hear his music played in public.
1916
King Edward VII 1901-1910 to King George V 1910-1936
Sir Charles Villiers Stanford had to wait five resolute years to hear his Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor played in public, a disappointment bound up with the tragedy of the ‘Lusitania’.
THE Leeds Festival of 1910 caused a stir with the appearance of Sergei Rachmaninoff as soloist in his own Second Piano Concerto, adding the Russian to a long list of overseas composers brought to England by the conductor, Sir Charles Villiers Stanford.
Stanford composed his own Second Piano Concerto, in which Rachmaninoff’s influence is readily discernible, the following year. Hopes of an early American premiere were dashed, but Stanford looked forward to conducting it at the Norfolk Festival in Connecticut in 1915, during a visit to Yale to receive an honorary Doctorate. However, eight days before he was due to leave, a German torpedo brutally cancelled his passage on the Lusitania, costing over a thousand lives. The performance went ahead, but Stanford was not there to hear it.
Yet another public performance, as part of the Queen’s Hall Proms in 1915, was cancelled. Stanford’s patience was finally rewarded in Bournemouth on December 7th, 1916, although the concerto’s Proms premiere did not take place until 2008.
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When was Stanford’s Piano Concerto in C minor composed?
Express the ideas below in a single sentence, using different words as much as possible. Do not be satisfied with the first answer you think of; think of several, and choose the best.
Stanford composed his Second Piano Concerto in 1911. Parts of it sound like Rachmaninoff’s piano music.