I am convinced that ,if programmers of classical music would put Mr. Litolff"s "symphonic concertos" in the concerhall they would be immensely popular with the audience. With the right pianist ,who can handle this kind of virtuosity and have the elan , excitement and showmanship, these pieces will be sensational !
This work, along with Max Bruch's Symphony #2 in F minor, started me on a life-long journey of delving into obscure orchestral works from the Romantic era. (I should also include Rheinberger's Piano Concerto). Not long afterwards, I came across Joachim Raff's Piano Concerto and his 5th symphony. This was in the mid-1980's and I seem to discover something "new" every week or so now. Michael Ponti was obviously a keen "fellow traveller" in the quest for unsung romantics.
RU-vid and Spotify really opened up the space for these discoveries. They got overshadowed by the modernist ideology and titans, that lead to the forgetting of many of those concertos and composers.
25:09 the 16-ths here are so uneven that I almost feel how exhausted the рianist was. The concerto is virtuosic. However, I must say that none of the melodies stuck in my head 10 minutes after the end.
