Piano Concerto No. 3 (Chopin)
The Piano Concerto No. 3 in A major is a spurious incomplete piano concerto by Frédéric Chopin. Only the piano solo part of the first movement is known; it was composed in 1841, with the orchestral accompaniment either lost or never written at all, and was published as an independent piece called the Allegro de concert, Op. 46. There is no evidence that Chopin ever started composing the second and third movements.
History
In Chopin: The Piano Concertos, Rink quotes from an unpublished Chopin letter, dated 10 September 1841, offering Breitkopf & Härtel an "Allegro maestoso (du 3me Concerto) pour piano seul" for 1,000 francs. In November 1841, Schlesinger published the Allegro de concert, which has a tempo indication of "Allegro maestoso", and Breitkopf & Härtel also published it in December of the same year. The work has the general characteristics of the opening movement of a concerto from around that time. It contains a lengthy introduction, with the section corresponding to the original piano solo commencing at bar 87. It seems clear that the "Allegro maestoso" Chopin referred to in his letter was the piece published two months later as Allegro de concert, Op. 46.
The first few notes of the piece were drafted around 1832, but it is not known when the rest of the piece was written. Chopin dedicated it to Friederike Müller (1816–1895), one of his favourite pupils, who studied with him for 18 months (1839–1841).
Structure
- I. Allegro maestoso
- II.
- III.
Putative reconstructions
While the Allegro de concert alone has been scored for piano and orchestra as a single-movement concerto by people such as Jean Louis Nicodé and Kazimierz Wiłkomirski, one person has ventured to reconstruct the entire three-movement concerto.
The Australian pianist Alan Kogosowski orchestrated the Allegro de concert and also the Nocturne in C-sharp minor, Op. posth. "Lento con gran espressione", and the Bolero in C major-A minor, Op. 19. Kogosowski put these together as a three-movement work and performed it on 8 October 1999 with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra under Neeme Järvi, under the misleading title of "Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 3 in A major".