Wilhelm Backhaus’s 1909 version of a piece in this key is the first recording of a piano concerto. In a 2/4 (“two-four”) movement of a concerto in this key, accented first and third eighth notes evoke a wedding festivity whose performer kicks a hat off a high pole. A concerto in this key that debuted at the Gewandhaus after its composer’s 16th birthday includes a slow Romanze whose lengthy cello solo trades with a theme borrowed by another composer’s setting of Heinrich (*) Heine. One composer turned a failed Concert Phantasie (“fantasy”) into a concerto in this key in which a woodwind chorale introduces a theme based on the Italian spelling of its soloist’s name. That piano concerto inspired another one in this key whose finale is based on the halling dance, and which starts with a timpani roll that crescendos into a fortissimo piano chord on this key’s tonic. For 10 points, Clara and Robert Schumann and Edvard Grieg wrote piano concerti in what minor key whose relative major is C? ■END■
ANSWER: A minor [accept A alone after “minor” is read, but reject it until then] (Backhaus’s recording is of Grieg’s piano concerto. Robert Schumann borrowed a theme in Dichterliebe from the Romanze in Clara’s piano concerto. The main theme of the first movement of Robert’s piano concerto contains a vowelless spelling of “Chiara.”)
<Jacob Egol, Classical Music and Opera>
= Average correct buzz position