Notes for: August 5, 2025
If you’re known to the world as the “Sunshine Composer,” you can be pretty sure you’ve brought a lot of pleasure to a lot of people. Although Moritz Moszkowski is hardly a household name today, in his day he was lionized as a brilliant pianist, a composer of sparkling salon pieces for the piano, a conductor, and a renowned teacher. Of his piano compositions, Paderewski said, “After Chopin, Moszkowski best understands how to write for the piano.” As a teacher, first in Berlin and then in Paris, he influenced scores of musicians who came to study with him.
By the turn of the century Moszkowski was a wealthy and much lauded artist. But his life took a downward turn. A problem with his arm had forced him to give up concert touring. He began suffering from health problems. Then, in a disastrous financial move, he sold the lucrative copyrights to his music and invested all the money in Polish, Russian, and German securities – investments that were swept away by the first world war. Sick and broke, he refused help from his many friends. A relief committee headed by Paderewski arranged a benefit concert in New York, but he died before the money could reach him. “Moszkowski dead!” one musical journal wailed; “So painful an announcement has not stricken the entire musical word since the deaths of Chopin, Rubinstein, and Liszt, of whom he was a worthy successor.”
The Suite for Two Violins and Piano, which Moszkowski wrote at the zenith of his popularity, shows him at his most virtuosic, brilliant, and irresistibly charming. The opening Allegro energico is, as its title demands, propulsively energetic, from the rush of violin double stops that dramatically open the movement to the big chords that close it. Both of the movement’s themes – a rhapsodic opening melody and a more lyrical second theme that emerges after the piano’s staccato chords – are passionate. Every passage is sonically rich, and the music surges throughout except for a surprising quiet pause before a build to a wild finish. Both the second and third movements, with their graceful melodies and striking rhythms, show Moszkowski at his Romantic best. The second movement, a charming waltz, is as lyrical and elegant as the first is fiery and dramatic, while the more sober third movement exudes Romantic soulfulness. Especially effective in this low-key Lento is the graceful canon between the two violins. What’s striking here too is how seamlessly the music flows among the three instruments. Then it’s as if Moszkowski is saying, “Now let’s have some fun,” with a high-spirited finale that dances buoyantly along, takes a brief lyrical break, then barrels to a giddy perpetual-motion coda. Not surprisingly, audiences loved it.