Reception
The Allegro de concert includes certain devices which reflect a more virtuosic technique than that required by his two published concertos. For this reason it is considered one of Chopin's most difficult pieces, but regardless of this challenge, some pianists and critics find it unconvincing. It has received relatively little attention in the concert hall or in recordings, and it is not particularly well known to music lovers. Those who have recorded it include Claudio Arrau, Nikolai Demidenko, Garrick Ohlsson, Nikita Magaloff, Vladimir Ashkenazy and Roger Woodward. However, Chopin himself seems to have been very proud of it. He told Aleksander Hoffmann: "This is the very first piece I shall play in my first concert upon returning home to a free Warsaw". 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. (Claude Debussy played it at the Paris Conservatoire in July 1879.) The work received one of its rare public performances at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in the early 1980s as the opening work for a 'quasi orchestral' solo piano recital that ended with only the second London performance of the equally demanding complete Alkan Concerto for Solo Piano by British pianist Mark Latimer.
Read more about this topic: Allegro De Concert (Chopin)
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