ABSTRACT
Schumann wrote a series of reviews of piano concertos that ran in the Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik from February through April 1836, then continued under different titles in January and February 1837, January 1839, and January 1840. This chapter discusses concertos in the old form that Schumann approved, the last concertos of Hummel, Ries, and Field, and the two concertos by Chopin. Schumann's realistic assessment of the last concertos by Hummel, Ries, and Field is that although they have merit, they will not displace earlier works by these same composers that came to the public's attention in the 1810s and 1820s when their creators were most active as performers and teachers. The motivic relationships among different thematic areas of the Concerto, although associated by Hans Engel with Beethoven's practice, are in fact a forward-looking feature, one that became something of a fashion in concertos of the time. All have a natural flow that smoothes away many disruptions the genre invites.
