The virtuosic Concertstück, Op. 3, is a masterfully written, large-sale work that Paul Taffanel selected as the required piece for the Paris Conservatory’s Concours of 1895. Taffanel had performed the work shortly after it was composed in the early 1880s and remained its enthusiastic admirer. He loved Andersen’s music, adopted his etudes into the Conservatory’s curriculum, and selected his works for two concours in the 1890s. In an age when many flutist-composers were writing only light-hearted theme-and-variation pieces and opera medleys, Andersen, in his Concertstück, demonstrates his ability to create a substantial sonata-form composition that is harmonically, contrapuntally, and formally refined.
