HUMMEL

A child of Mozart’s household

Johann Nepomuk Hummel (1778–1837) was born in Pressburg (today Bratislava) and showed such promise as a child pianist that, from about age eight, he lived and studied for two years as a pupil in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s own household in Vienna. He went on to a long career as a touring virtuoso, a court Kapellmeister (in Eisenstadt, Stuttgart and Weimar), and one of the most sought-after piano teachers in Europe.

The “brilliant” style

By the 1810s and 1820s, Hummel was widely regarded as among the finest pianists alive, admired for a light, clear touch, rapid and evenly articulated passagework, and richly ornamented, singing melodic lines. Historians of the piano describe this manner — elegant figuration laid over a comparatively simple harmonic frame, with the orchestra often reduced to a supporting role — as the “brilliant style,” and Hummel is usually named as one of its most important and influential representatives.

Piano Concerto No. 2 in A minor, Op. 85

Composed around 1816 and published in the early 1820s, the A minor concerto was one of Hummel’s most celebrated works and remained in the touring repertoire of virtuoso pianists for decades. It shows the brilliant style at its most polished: long, ornamented solo lines, crisp figuration, and a formal outline — a dramatic first movement in the minor, a lyrical slow movement, and a lively closing rondo — that became a template many concertos of the period followed, Chopin’s among them.