Piano Concerto No. 2 (Hummel)

Johann Nepomuk Hummel's Piano Concerto No. 2 in A minor, Op. 85 was written in 1816 and published in Vienna in 1821. Unlike his earlier piano concerti, which closely followed the model of Mozart's, the A minor concerto, like the B minor Concerto, Op. 89, is written in a proto-Romantic style that anticipates the later stylistic developments of composers such as Frédéric Chopin and Felix Mendelssohn.

The piano concerto was written by Hummel as a showcase for his virtuosity at the instrument. It was written in 1816 and is scored for piano, flute, two oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, and strings.

The work is composed in traditional three movement form. There is a solo transition in the second movement leading into the Rondo .

Although Hummel's music, seen as essentially Mozartian in style, had fallen out of fashion by the 1830s, the A minor concerto nonetheless exercised considerable influence over a number of works that helped to usher in the Romantic style. Frédéric Chopin, who had played the Hummel concerti, drew from elements of the A minor concerto in his own piano concerti. Indeed, it has been suggested that Chopin's concerto is closely linked both thematically and structurally to the Hummel antecedent.

The A minor concerto da camera of Charles-Valentin Alkan has also been noted for its debt to Hummel's style of writing for the keyboard.

While generally uninterested in Hummel as a composer,Robert Schumann had made a close study of the A minor concerto in 1828 and considered it one of the works (along with the F-sharp minor piano sonata) of his "heyday". And in his own A minor concerto, Schumann makes reference to aspects of Hummel's virtuosic style.

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