Massenet finished his Piano Concerto in 1902, when he was 60, so officially in his list of compositions, it comes in between two of his most famous operas, Le Jongleur de Notre Dame of 1902 and Cherubin of 1905. It would seem that Massenet had first sketched it as long before as 1866, when he was living in Rome. In the 1860s it would have sounded astoundingly modern, and although today it seems charmingly romantic, I think even in 1903 when Louis Diemer gave the first performance it must have struck some listeners as forward looking. I couldn’t help wondering, listening to this spirited performance by Stephen Coombs, whether Massenet had heard Rachmaninov’s Second Concerto (first performed that same year); it seems almost impossible – great minds think alike, for no one would ever think that Massenet belonged to any other time than Paris in the belle epoque.
The first movement opens with a dreamy theme, taken up by the orchestra and then given a series of rollicking variations. In the orchestration one immediately begins to hear echoes of typical Palais Garnier ballet music with the piano taking the place of the prima ballerina. The much shorter slow movement has a tune as haunting as any tenor aria from one of Massenet’s operas – this is highly polished, professional music. Some people may feel they need to go on a sugar-free diet afterwards, but anyone who loves Massenet’s operas will delight in the whole thing; the whizz-bang third movement subtitled “Airs Slovaques” is an unashamed parody of Liszt.
Massenet’s pupils included Reynaldo Hahn – I’d like to know what he thought of this concerto – who was already an established figure in Paris in 1903. By the time he came to compose his own Piano Concerto in 1930, Hahn had moved away from the chamber works and melodies with which he had made his name, and become a highly successful composer of light operas and musical comedies.
Hahn’s concerto was dedicated to Magda Tagliaferro, who recorded it with the composer conducting in 1937 – a famous set of 78s reissued on LP in the 1970s in France and England (World Records, 1/76 – nla). Stephen Coombs found himself using the same score that Hahn had marked for Tagliaferro for that recording – the only surviving complete edition of the work. Several cuts had been made and these have been restored for this first modern recording.
The first movement is called “Improvisation”. Hahn, of course, was an accomplished pianist. He and Ravel were both members of a “French Committee for the Diffusion of Musical Studies”, formed in 1929. Both were then at work on their piano concertos. How one would like to know whether they compared notes; as it is the opening movement of Hahn’s concerto has something of the same questioning, sprightly element of the Ravel G major. The tiny second movement, “Danse”, gives way to the three-part finale – this is the section where the new recording expands on Tagliaferro’s original. Hahn composed one of his most delightful musicals just after this concerto – O mon bel inconnu!. The shimmering, chattering dialogue between piano and orchestra is beautifully conveyed in Stephen Coombs’s virtuoso performance and the clear, bright recorded sound.
Jean-Yves Ossonce conducts both performances with a great feeling for the lightness of touch necessary to avoid any cloying sentimentality. This sort of music isn’t to everyone’s taste, but if you’d sooner have fraises des bois and creme Chantilly rather than foie gras and trumpets, this is for you.'