André Mathieu (1929-1968), a Canadian composer and performer, received acclaim in Europe, Canada and United States from his earliest years. He revealed brilliant pianistic skill, and critics hailed him as the "young Canadian Mozart". Mathieu's early solo piano works, written mostly in ternary form, reveal an abundance of compositional ideas based on the influences of Romantic and Impressionist styles. However, when he began composing Piano Concerto No. 3, a much larger work, his lack of compositional training became evident. Formal weakness resulted in a disconnection between themes and lack of thematic and motivic development. Not until Mathieu studied with Swiss composer Arthur Honegger did he develop and clearly display a concept of formal structure. In this study, I will demonstrate that, through compositional studies with Arthur Honegger, André Mathieu assimilated a new approach to form, resulting in the discovery of his mature compositional voice found for the first time in the Piano Concerto No. 4. The synthesis of Romantic and Impressionistic styles in this concerto further contributes to the unique nature of this mature voice.This document is organized in six chapters. Chapter I reviews current literature on André Mathieu and his music and points out both the values and the limitations of this literature. Chapter II relates Mathieu's biography. Chapter III provides background information on Mathieu's solo piano works and four concerti, as well as the difficult pianistic techniques composed into those works. Chapter IV discusses the influences of Romantic and Impressionist styles in Piano Concerto No. 4 and how Mathieu synthesized both styles. Chapter V analyzes the form, motivic and thematic material, and rhythmic design of all three movements of Piano Concerto No. 4 and compares them with that of Piano Concerto No. 3. Honegger's influence also is discussed in Chapter V. Chapter VI is the conclusion. Musical examples throughout will illustrate points made.

In this study, I do a research on my own ways and the influences that helped me to prepare Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G interpretation and performance. Is it an intuition, inspiration from a recording or something I have learned in a master- class. I went through Ravels’ piano music to see the development of the interpretation that blossomed into the Concerto. I looked at the preparation process that I did on my own, then together with the second pianist and at the end with the conductor. I have described my feelings after the performance as well as looked into different recordings of famous artists. The various influences are hard to measure since the artistic process is always under a constant change and development but looking closer to the sources of inspiration made me realize that everything I have experienced in connection to Ravel’s music has influenced my understanding and interpretation of the Concerto, most of all the master-classes with J.Hlinka, P.Roberts and M.Sturfält.

During Fritz Reiner’s forty-year conducting career in the United States, he championed Béla Bartók’s orchestral music, programming Bartók’s orchestral works on over sixty concerts with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and with other major American orchestras. These included performances in which the composer himself appeared as a soloist. Moreover, Reiner continued to conduct Bartók’s music following the composer’s death, and his efforts to promote Bartók’s works contributed to their significance to the American orchestral repertoire. The thesis explores connections between performance markings in Reiner’s personal copies of Bartók scores and the recordings he made of them, the ways in which Reiner’s live performances and recordings of Bartók’s music affected the American reception of Bartók’s works, and how Reiner’s collaboration with Bartók related to the revision of Bartók’s orchestral works in their published forms through case studies of Bartók’s Piano Concerto no. 1, Concerto for Orchestra, and The Miraculous Mandarin. The first case study considers Bartók’s performances of his Piano Concerto no. 1 with Reiner during his first U.S. concert tour of 1927-1928. Following an overview of Bartók’s activities in America during that time, three first-edition scores of Piano Concerto no. 1 are analyzed in order to show the significance of handwritten additions, corrections, and conducting markings made by Fritz Reiner, a Universal Edition staff member, and Serge Koussevitzky in preparation for performances with Bartók in 1928. It not only provides a window into early performances of the work with the composer at the piano in the absence of a recording, but also offers insight into Bartók’s preferences for performance of the work, some of which are reflected in the first or second editions of the work, and some of which are only preserved in Reiner’s scores. The second case study examines a new source for Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra held at Northwestern University that bears extensive corrections by Bartók, as well as Reiner’s conducting markings. It discusses the circumstances surrounding Reiner’s acquisition of the score and its role in Reiner’s performances and recordings of Concerto for Orchestra with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. The third and final case study details Reiner’s preparation and performance of two concert versions (“Scenes” and “Suite”) of Bartók’s pantomime The Miraculous Mandarin using Reiner’s annotations to four versions of the score held at Northwestern, Bartók’s correspondence with his publisher, and program notes from Reiner’s 1927 world premiere of the “Scenes” to provide a better understanding of Reiner’s preparation and performances of both the “Scenes” and “Suite.” It further analyzes press coverage of his performances of the “Suite” to demonstrate that the press reaction to objectionable elements of the plot mellowed over time, and that critics consistently praised Reiner’s expert preparation and interpretation of the work. The thesis considers the publication and performance history of Bartók’s Piano Concerto no. 1, Concerto for Orchestra, and the concert versions of The Miraculous Mandarin in terms of Reiner’s collaboration with Bartók, his role in the promotion of Bartók’s music in the U.S., and his reputation as an authoritative interpreter of it.

This thesis is an analytical study of various cadenzas written for the first movement of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No.20 in D minor, K.466. As one of the six of his own concertos for which Mozart did not provide an original cadenza, the D minor concerto poses an important challenge to the performer: should she compose or improvise her own cadenza, or should she select one written by someone else? Many composer/pianists active during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries penned cadenzas to this concerto for their own use, and this thesis explores those by August Eberhard Müller, Emanuel Aloys Förster, Ludwig van Beethoven, Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Charles-Valentin Alkan, Clara Schumann, Johannes Brahms, Ferruccio Busoni, Bedrich Smetana and Paul Badura-Skoda. In addition to these written-out cadenzas, it also discusses improvised cadenzas in the recordings by Robert Levin and Chick Corea. Each composer/pianist’s unique compositional style is illuminated through the study of each cadenza, and consideration of these styles allows multiple views on a single concerto. A discussion of the meaning and history of cadenzas precedes the analytical study, and in conclusion, the author contributes her own cadenza.

Charles-Valentin Alkan ( 1813-1888 ), French composer and pianist at early nineteenth century, devoted himself to write piano music only as Chopin during his entire life. As a child prodigy, his talent of performing piano was recognized when he was quite young, then, became as an outstanding pianist of his time. However, because of his unsociable personality and strange behavior, Alkan was soon forgotten by the public. His music was discovered in recent decades by scholars and pianists. They started to explore his works; consequently, he became famous again. There are three parts in this study. The first part aims on his mysterious life. The second part seeks to clarify the development of the concerto and the musical environment of Paris at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The last part should focus on music style and structure based on his earlier work Concerto da Camera, No. 10. Hopefully, through the research, the historical significant of Alkan can be defined more precisely.

The Yellow River Piano Concerto was adapted from the famous Yellow River Cantata, a grand choral work composed by Xian Xinghai in 1939, during the Japanese invasion of China. It is a very famous and important work in China and exhibits strong nationalistic characteristics. The Cantata inspired the entire Chinese nation during their defense against the largest and most brutal genocide in human history. It has since become a symbol of heroism and solidarity of all Chinese people around the world. The Yellow River Piano Concerto was composed by a group of Chinese composer-pianists in 1969 led by Yin Chengzong. All the biographies of the composers of both the Cantata and the Piano Concerto are supplied in this dissertation. The Piano Concerto consists of four movements: The Song of The Yellow River Boatmen, Ode to the Yellow River, The Wrath of the Yellow River and Defend the Yellow River. Each movement has been analyzed in terms of structure. Music examples are provided to assist in the understanding of the work. / Dissertation (MMus (Performing Art))--University of Pretoria, 2008. / Music / unrestricted

The purpose of this dissertation is to analyze Concerto No.3 "Ave Maria" by Alemdar Karamanov (1934-2007) and to elucidate the work through historical background and the composer's ideas. This concerto is presented as a significant gesture of dramatic emotion, religious belief, romantic spirit and universal feeling. The subtitle "Ave Maria" relates to a set up already present within the music program. An analysis of interval relationships will help performers better realize Karamanov's music language. In view of the complicated nature of this piece, an analytical study is considered necessary. The study centers principally on analysis, with an emphasis on the developments of form, tonality and motives to help performers better understand the work, and how to best approach this concerto.

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In recent years, Brahms’s music has begun to occupy a larger role in the consciousness of musicologists, and with this surge of interest came a refreshingly original approach to his music. Although the First Piano Concerto op. 15 of Johannes Brahms is a beloved part of the standard piano repertoire, there is a curious under-representation of the work through the lens of historical performance practice. This monograph addresses the various aspects that comprise a thorough performance practice analysis of the concerto. These include pedaling, articulation, phrasing, and questions of tempo, an element that takes on greater importance beyond just complicating matters technically. These elements are then put into the context of Brahms’s own pianism, conducting, teaching, and musicological endeavors based on first and second-hand accounts of the composer’s work. It is the combining of these concepts that serves to illuminate the concerto in a far more detailed fashion, and ultimately enabling us to re-evaluate whether the time honored modern interpretations of the work fall within the boundaries that Brahms himself would have considered effective and accurate. / Music Performance