Concerto Conversations: With a 68-Minute CD

by Joseph Kerman

The concerto has attracted relatively little attention as a genre, Joseph Kerman observes, and his urbane and wide-ranging Norton Lectures fill the gap in a way that will delight all music listeners. Kerman addresses the full range of the concerto repertory, treating both the general and the particular. His perceptive commentary on individual works--with illustrative performances on the accompanying CD--is alive with enthusiasm, intimations, and insights into the spirit of concerto.

Concertos model human relationships, according to Kerman, and his description of the conversation between solo instrument and orchestra brings this observation vividly to life. What does the solo instrument do when it first enters in a concerto? How do composers balance claims of solo-orchestra contrast and solo virtuosity? When do they deploy the sumptuous musical textures that only concertos can provide? Kerman's unexpected answers offer a new understanding of the concerto and a stimulus to enhanced listening.

In language that the "Boston Globe"'s Richard Dyer calls "always delightfully vivid," Kerman conducts readers and listeners into the conversations that concertos so eloquently enact. Amid the musical forces at play, he renews the dialogue of music lovers with the language of the concerto--the familiar, the lesser-known, the cherished, and the undervalued. The CD packaged with the book contains movements (or excerpts therefrom) from works that Kerman treats most intensively--by Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Liszt, Tchaikovsky, Bartok, Stravinsky, and Prokofiev.

Tracks on the CD:
1. Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor, 1st movement.
Robert Levin, fortepiano.
2. Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat, Emperor. From 1st movement.
Robert Levin, fortepiano.
3. Stravinsky, Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments, 3rd movement.
Olli Mustonen, piano.
4. Bartok, Piano Concerto No. 2, 3rd movement.
Zoltan Kocsis, piano.
5. Schumann, Piano Concerto in A minor, from 2nd movement.
Radu Lupu, piano.
6. Chaikovsky Violin Concerto, 2nd movement.
Arthur Grumiaux, violin.
7. Chaikovsky Violin Concerto, from 3rd movement.
Arthur Grumiaux, violin.
8. Liszt Piano Concerto No. 1 in E-flat, from 1st movement.
Martha Argerich, piano.
9. Prokofiev, Violin Concerto No. 1 in D, 1st movement.
Kyung Wha Chung, violin.
10. Prokofiev, Violin Concerto No. 1 in D, from 3rd movement.
Kyung Wha Chung, violin.
11. Bach Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in G, 1st movement.
Musica Antiqua Koln.
12. Mozart, Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor, K. 466, 3rd movement.
Malcolm Bilson, fortepiano.

Genres: Music

175 pages, Hardcover

First published February 5, 1999

About the author

Joseph Wilfred Kerman -- born Zukerman -- (1924 - 2014) was an American critic and musicologist. One of the leading musicologists of his generation, his 1985 book Contemplating Music: Challenges to Musicology (published in the UK as Musicology) was described by Philip Brett in The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians as "a defining moment in the field." He was Professor Emeritus of Musicology at the University of California, Berkeley.

Reviews

[Lobstergirl · Rating 3 out of 5]

It would have been so much nicer to sit through the lectures. Reading a book like this is very laborious. You have a CD with tracks featuring examples mentioned in the text. In addition, Kerman includes 44 chunks of musical scores - all at the end of the book. (It would be much better to incorporate them into the text.) The musical scores are not labeled in their section at the end. (Why on earth not?) The Example score or the Track are indicated in the right margin, so as I came across each one I would stop, and either listen to the track, or (unless I knew the music thoroughly, which I did in some cases) find the example music on Youtube and listen to it. So you might have an example which is 14 bars long, and you'll have to listen - acutely - to a 10-minute concerto movement to locate the 14-bar passage. The whole process is quite distracting from the project of trying to process what Kerman is saying about concertos.