Your favorite cadenzas!

[Brian]

What are your favorite solo cadenzas?

For me the story starts with the unexpected, groundbreaking harpsichord solo in Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 and reaches my other favorite peak in another long cadenza that starts unannounced and incorporates many twists and turns central to the entire piece: Ravel's piano concerto for the left hand.

And of course it would be silly not to mention Mendelssohn's violin concerto, or Grieg.

[North Star]

Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 5
Ravel's piano concerto for the left hand.

Those two mentioned first are the ones I immediately thought of, too.

[PaulR]

Cadenza's to Shostakovich 1st violin concerto and 1st cello concerto

[Lisztianwagner]

Some of mine: Ravel's Piano Concerto for the left hand, Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No.3, Beethoven's "Emperor" Concerto, Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No.2 and Rimsky-Korsakov's Capriccio Espagnol.

[Holden]

The cadenza Perahia used in his recording of the LvB PC1 with Haitink

[Luke]

Odd that of the first four posts, three mention the Ravel left hand one. Especially as it's the one that immediately sprang to my mind too, before I even clicked on the thread. So that already seems to be some kind of consensus. I must say that in its own less spectacular way the simple cadenza in the G major concerto seems to me a model of refinement and poetry. The other one that jumps into my head - it would, wouldn't it - is the one in the Tippett Piano Concerto, where the celeste joins in with its Midsummer Marriage magic-music.

A cheeky but genuinely-felt addition would be the cadenza in the Alkan Concerto for solo piano, which as I've said before here (I imagine) is a miracle in so many ways - how do you write a cadenza in a work which is already of epically, unimaginably virtuosic proportions and drama? And how do you make it clear that only the 'soloist' is participating in this presumably outlandishly hard cadenza? Answer: by scaling it down to a single line of devilishly difficult repeated notes which are of an obsessive intensity and yet possess a close-focus intimacy that could only be being performed by 'the soloist'; make the whole thing a skin-of-the-teeth tightrope where things could go wrong at any second with disastrous consequences; furthermore make it the structural eye of the needle (and the literal one, the music being so 'narrow' at this point) through which the massive first movement has to pass before its last triumphant reaches can be attained.... Sorry. I just love that piece!

Oh, and Hi, guys. I miss you all! Wish I could post more often...

[The Six]

Prokofiev PC #2 is basically death metal for its day.

[Kontrapunctus]

Prokofiev PC #2 is basically death metal for its day.

Haha, a great line! I love that one and the ossia cadenza (heavy, chordal one) in Rach 3. Here's Lazar showing how it's done (audio only):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgjsBAmedw8  (I forgot the format for videos...)

[ibanezmonster]

Prokofiev PC #2 is basically death metal for its day.

Exactly. Brutality + technicality.

[jochanaan]

...Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No.3...

Which one?  On Rachmaninov's own recording, he played the later, shorter one, but most modern pianists prefer the earlier, longer, more dramatic version, as I do.

We necessarily speak here of "pre-written" cadenzas, but of course most earlier musicians improvised cadenzas on the spot, like modern jazz musicians.  Has anyone heard a modern player who improvised his/her own cadenza(s) in a concert?  Several years ago I heard a young Israeli violinist, whose name escapes me, play a concerto by Tartini with a local chamber orchestra, and I certainly got the sense she was improvising--and it was a spectacular cadenza!

[Cato]

Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No.3

0:) AMEN!!!  0:)

Which one?  On Rachmaninov's own recording, he played the later, shorter one, but most modern pianists prefer the earlier, longer, more dramatic version, as I do.

The original one!  I am guessing that he recorded the shorter one so it might fit on the 78's (?)

[Brian]

The original one!  I am guessing that he recorded the shorter one so it might fit on the 78's (?)

Au contraire, reportedly the man himself could not play the longer one! I prefer the longer cadenza too.

[Cato]

Au contraire, reportedly the man himself could not play the longer one! I prefer the longer cadenza too.

Okay!  Thanks for the information!  Is this one reason why he so admired Vladimir Horowitz in #3?

[Kontrapunctus]

Okay!  Thanks for the information!  Is this one reason why he so admired Vladimir Horowitz in #3?

Horowitz, rather surprisingly, played the shorter one, so it must be for his playing of the piece in general.

[The Six]

Au contraire, reportedly the man himself could not play the longer one! I prefer the longer cadenza too.

I don't know about that. All I've read is that he played the shorter one in a recording because of issues in the studio/

[Lisztianwagner]

Which one?  On Rachmaninov's own recording, he played the later, shorter one, but most modern pianists prefer the earlier, longer, more dramatic version, as I do.

I referred to the ossia cadenza, but on second thoughts you're right, it's better to specify since there are two versions of that section. I love both the versions, but I usually prefer the longer one.

[jochanaan]

I think we can discount any question about whether Rachmaninov could play anything he'd written; he was one of the world's great pianists as well as a great composer.  But in his later years he revised his earlier works, always for greater condensation and tighter construction; I have read that the cuts in such recordings as Eugene Ormandy's 1959 (I think) recording of Symphony #2 were sanctioned by Rachmaninov himself.  So it wouldn't surprise me if he came to prefer the shorter cadenza for musical reasons as well as technique.

[Orpheus]

1. Grieg's Piano Concerto
2. Schumann's Piano Concerto
3. Saint-Saens' Piano Concerto No.2
4. Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto
5. Shostakovich's Piano Concerto No.1 (Finale)

[The Six]

Here's a very...interesting cadenza to Beethoven's 3rd PC that Alkan wrote. WARNING: If you're easily offended by over-the-top virtuosity and the borrowing of themes, you might want to skip this one.

http://www.youtube.com/v/_GpwCELWWS4

[Mirror Image]

Two immediately spring to mind:

Ravel: Piano Concerto for the left-hand
Shostakovich: Violin Concerto No. 1