Allegro de Concert (Chopin) - History

History

Chopin published his two piano concertos in 1830. That same year he wrote that he was planning a concerto for two pianos and orchestra, and would play it with his friend Napoleon Tomasz Nidecki (1807–1852) if he managed to finish it. He worked on it for some months but he had the greatest difficulty with it, and this work never eventuated; however, he may have used ideas from it in later works.

There is also evidence that Chopin started work on a third concerto for piano and orchestra. In Chopin: The Piano Concertos, Rink quotes from an unpublished Chopin letter, dated 10 September 1841, offering Breitkopf & Härtel an "Allegro maestoso (du 3me Concerto) pour piano seul" for 1,000 francs.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). Franz Liszt gave her the nickname "Mademoiselle opus quarante- six" ("forty six", the work's opus number, in French).