Johann David Hermann; Piano Concerto No.4 in F min, Op.8 (1797)

Johann David Hermann (c. 1760/64-1846/52) was a German/French composer. His nationality is a bit fuzzy, as he was born in what is now Germany (I've found conflicting dates, and no more specific location for his birth or death), but was at the time part of the Holy Roman Empire. But he spent most or all of his musical career in Paris, where he's sometimes known by his Frenchified name of Jacques-Dominique Harmand. It's probably not for nothing that the only biographical sources I could find about him are in French.

While Hermann had ties with the French royalty, as I mentioned last week when I posted his third concerto (   • Johann David Hermann; Piano Concerto ...  ), dedicated to his student, Queen Marie Antoinette, his fourth concerto was published after the Revolution, so that was no longer a thing. The fact that this is the first of his concertos written in a minor key might be a clue as to how he felt about that. He apparently wrote 2 more concertos, among other things, though I haven't found scores and don't know what keys they were in, but not long after this, he left the world of music altogether, though he lived for a good while after this.

Wikipedia: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_... (French)
IMSLP: https://imslp.org/wiki/Category:Herma...

Movements:
0:00 - I. Allegro Agitato
18:21 - II. Adagio
24:46 - III. Rondo. Allegretto

The second movement of this concerto is unusual in that most of the instruments drop out - there are no winds or violins, just the violas, cello, and bass to accompany the soloist. Notably, the score explicitly calls out 1 cello as a soloist, separately from the other cellos and bass, so it functions as something of a duet between the piano and cello, with the remaining low strings providing backing.

As usual, the cadenza in the first movement is my own work. I actually started work on this piece before the 3rd concerto from last week, but the score was in such a sorry state that it took a great deal more work to correct all the serious errors. The manuscript on IMSLP has so many errors that it's nearly unplayable as is. The most egregious of these is a key change in the first movement from the 4 flats of F minor into 3 flats - not sure if this is supposed to be Eb or C minor, but neither works. Notably, this change only appears in the keyboard part and none of the others, and almost every D in the score in every part sounds discordant and out of place as a D natural, and much better as a Db, so I came to the conclusion that this key change is just wrong and should be ignored. Similarly in the third movement there is an indicated key change from F minor to C major, rather than the more fitting F major, and likewise most of the B's sound better as Bb's. Even though this change exists on all parts, I believe it to be erroneous as well. On top of this there were countless missing or extra accidentals that sound very horribly discordant as written, and the note lengths often don't correctly add up to the number of beats in the measure. In most cases I simply had to shorten/lengthen notes to fit, but in two places in the second movement I actually lengthened the measure to add a beat, which somehow worked better than any other correction. If anyone plans to play this with an orchestra, and would like to use my corrected version of the score, let me know, as it was a lot of work.

Disclaimer: Yes, it's synthesized. Obviously real musicians with real instruments would be vastly superior, but this simulated performance is better than nothing at all, which is what existed previously. My greatest wish is that these videos will inspire someone with the means to arrange a real performance and hopefully record and publish it so we can hear them in their full glory. If that someone is you, or you know of an existing recording of this, please let me know and I may add a link to this description.