Charles Gounod - Suite Concertante for Pedal Piano and Orchestra (1886)

Charles-François Gounod (17 June 1818 – 18 October 1893), usually known as Charles Gounod, was a French composer. He wrote twelve operas, of which the most popular has always been Faust (1859); his Roméo et Juliette (1867) also remains in the international repertory. He composed a large amount of church music, many songs, and popular short pieces including his Ave Maria (an elaboration of a Bach piece), and Funeral March of a Marionette.

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Suite concertante in A major, GC. 526 for Peadlier Piano and Orchestra (1886)
Dedication: A Madame Lucie Palicot

1. Entrée de fête. Moderato maestoso (0:00)
2. Chasse. Allegro con fuoco (6:28)
3. Romance. Andante cantabile (13:35)
4. Tarentelle. Vivace (19:24)

Roberto Prosseda, pedalier piano and the Orchestra della Svizzera italiana, conducted by Howard Shelley
Hyperion CDA67975

Here is a link to the live performance of Gounod's Pedalier Concerto with Roberto Prosseda at the piano
https://youtu.be/vW9mhB5qm70?si=uXWrXGzGy4zvzjEO

Details by Gérard Condé © 2013
The Suite concertante in A major, was completed in early spring 1886. Its premiere in Bordeaux on 17 March 1887 was followed by a second performance at the Royal Philharmonic Society in London on 23 April, while in Paris the Société des Concerts du Conservatoire had to abandon a projected performance because the firm of Pleyel-Wolf anticipated needing forty minutes to set up the instrument and twenty to remove it.

The score is conceived as a sweeping fresco, giving pride of place to clarity, simplicity and a wholesome brio. After the neoclassical flavor of the opening tutti, Entrée de fête, a deliciously frivolous motif precedes the reprise of the first theme by the soloist. But this restatement is elliptical and modulatory, leading to a succession of parallel sixth chords that introduce the second theme: a long flowing, undulating melody sung by the left hand.

The evocation of the hunt in the horns and strings of the Chasse is thoroughly realistic. The piano takes up these formulas and soon launches into galloping figuration. A harsh ‘mort’ on the pedal-board gives the signal for a second crescendo, grimmer and more concise, modulating and rising to fortissimo. Then the strings establish a meditative mood. The piano responds with a cantabile theme in almost choral style, shifting curiously from the religious to the galant. The orchestra takes up the cantabile theme, accompanied by arpeggios from the soloist. Anguished tremolos bring back the hunting motif, which bursts forth in a fortissimo tutti. This recurrence of the initial motif is the starting point for a true development in which the full forces are deployed.

A chain of modulating arpeggiated chords provides a transition to the Romance. A long-introverted clarinet theme, prolonged and intensified by the strings, prepares the entry of the piano. It is tempting to consider the central section as an ornamented free variation of the opening theme, in which the soloist emerges from the amiably supportive orchestra in a highly Mozartian style of pianism. Halfway through, the accompaniment is reduced to almost no more than the Alberti bass in the violas. Thus, when the violins take up the opening theme of the first section, it seems natural that the piano should accompany it with that same Alberti bass, as in Beethoven’s ‘Emperor’ Concerto. The cadenza, which extends over a tonic pedal in the horns, sets the ethereal piano against the melancholy song of the lower woodwind in one of those valedictory atmospheres whose secret Gounod found in Mozart.

The piano leads the way in the Tarentelle, for the orchestra seems merely to cling to its coat-tails. When the flutes and clarinets, in flowing parallel thirds, impose C major over a double pedal point, the effect is like a ray of sunshine that increases the tension: modulations, crescendo, chromaticisms, rapid exchanges between the sections of the orchestra and the soloist up to an imposing fortissimo over 6–4 harmonies that are maintained virtually until the conclusion.