The oft-misunderstood German composer Max Reger wrote his Piano Concerto in F Minor in 1910, when it was premiered in Leipzig by virtuoso pianist Frieda Kwast-Hodapp with the Gewandhausorchester. In 2016, on the centenary of Reger’s death, the concerto returned to the site of its world premiere with a jaw-dropping performance by the great Peter Serkin, longtime champion of undersung contemporary composers and one of the rare pianists to add the notoriously challenging work to his repertoire.
The turbulent, harmonically complex concerto, with “thematic motives of a Beethovenian pregnancy and force” (Grove Music Online), unfolds with gravitas and pathos under Serkin’s hands, accompanied by the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig under the unerring baton of veteran conductor Herbert Blomstedt. From the gargantuan Allegro to the feverish finale, passing through the Largo—the “gem of the piece,” written in just seven days—Serkin’s “splendid … involving performance conveys [the work’s] searching character and integrity” (Anthony Tommasini in The New York Times).
