Stavenhagen, Bernhard

Stavenhagen, Bernhard

(b. Greiz, 24. November 1862 – d. Geneva, 25. December 1914)

Piano Concerto in B minor Op. 4 (Piano Reduction for 2 pianos, 2 copies)

For more information on the piece:
Bernhard Stavenhagen was born in Greiz on November 24th, 1862. His first music education took place in his native town under Wilhelm Urban; at the age of 12, when his family moved to Berlin, he studied with Theodor Kullak and was exceptionally admitted to the Hochschule, where he studied composition and theory with Fiedrich Kiel and piano with Ernst Rudorff. Being an offspring of Reinecke’s piano school, Rudorff had a rather conservative approach to piano technique, promoting the principle of the “calm hand”. During his Berlin period, Stavenhagen was awarded the Mendelssohn Prize for his pianistic activity (1880).

After the success in Berlin of Liszt’s students Friedheim and d’Albert, Stavenhagen moved to Weimar in 1885, where he soon became one of Liszt’s favourite students. There he established friendly relationships with other students of Liszt, including Moritz Rosenthal, Emil Sauer and Arthur Friedheim, with whom he visited Xaver Scharwenka in Leipzig. He followed the master in most of his last journeys (including those to Rome, Budapest, Paris, London and Bayreuth), acting as his secretary but also performing many of his works in important venues. Their friendship is documented by several photographs which show the intense affection between the old master and his young student, who was later to write interesting memories about Liszt’s performance and teaching, and to record a few of Liszt’s piano works, among others the Hungarian Rhapsody n.12; on several of these rolls he added the remark “according to personal memory of Liszt” (1905). His performance of Wagner/Liszt’s Isolden Liebestod is an important document of the practice of a-synchronisation of both hands in piano performance of the late Romantic Era 1, although Rattalino heavily criticises the nature and extent of Stavenhagen’s interventions on the text, in the virtuoso style, as documented by his surviving recordings 2.

On April 10th, 1886, Stavenhagen was chosen as the soloist in Liszt’s First Piano Concerto during an all-Liszt programme at London’s Crystal Palace, which was followed, six days later, by a Liszt-marathon for solo piano marking Stavenhagen’s solo debut in London. The impressive programme (especially in consideration of the pianist’s young age at that time: he was only twenty-three) included Funérailles, Sposalizio, the BACH Fantasy and Fugue, both Legends, two Paganini Etudes, a Petrarch Sonnet and the Huguenots Fantasy. This programme was considered as standing at the crossroads of “two cultures, combining ‘abstract’ pieces, studies and transcriptions”. 3 When Liszt died on July 31st of the very same year, Stavenhagen was at his bedside, and he read the funeral oration at the master’s memorial service. He was later to edit many works by Liszt, and it was Stavenhagen who gave the title Malédiction to the work by Liszt which is now known with this name.

read preface to full score > HERE