Mozart Piano Concertos Nr.17 & 20

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 1756-1791
Piano Concerto No.20 in D minor . d-moll . en re mineur K.466

I. Allegro	15:00		Cadenza: Beethoven
II. Romanze	8:02
III. Rondo (Allegro assai)	7:46		Cadenza: Anderszewski

Piano Concerto No.17 in G major. G-dur. en sol majeur K.453

I. Allegro	12:11		Cadenza: Mozart
II. Andante	11:27		Cadenza: Mozart
III. Allegretto	7:48
			62:44

Scottish Chamber Orchestra
Piotr Anderszewski piano & direction

Mozart

Piano Concertos, K.453 & K.466

Mozart's piano concertos take us on an adventur­ous journey tracing the development of his unique genius. During the years between 1781 and 1786 Mozart was released from the yoke of his employ­ment by the Archbishop of Salzburg, Hieronymus Colloredo, and settled in Vienna. Culminating in the writing of The Marriage of Figaro, these were the most prolific years of his career, when the former court composer to the archbishop, although over­worked, revelled in his freedom and became one of the most warmly admired and acclaimed artists in Vienna. The different stages in his popularity can be followed if we consider the chronology of his piano concertos: six concertos appeared in 5784, and as many in 1786. He wrote only two more between 1788 and 1791: by that time his situation had changed, and after being a virtuoso, feted and sought-after, he was now in much grimmer circum­stances, mired in insurmountable financial and personal difficulties.

Completed on 12 April 1784, the Concerto in G, K.453, the only one of Mozart's great concertos in this key, is also the second (after the Concerto in B flat, K.449) to be dedicated to his pupil Barbara von Ployer. Daughter of the Salzburg court's Vienna agent, she was an excellent pianist who gave the concerto its first performance at one of the concerts she liked to arrange for her circle of friends, includ­ing Mozart, at her property at Dobling near Vienna. In June he announced to his father, Leopold, his intention of going with Paisiello to a musical even­ing given by `la signora Babette', who would be playing this concerto. He would use the occasion to show off his young pupil's talent to the Italian composer. It is an intimate, amiable work, whose inspiration has been compared by C.M. Girdle-stone to that of Beethoven's G major concerto, No. 4. It is likewise the fourth of the exceptional series that Mozart completed in 1784, a year teeming with inventive riches.

The atmosphere of the work swings between melancholy and high spirits, hesitation and fulfil­ment, smiles and tears, the wind instruments playing a prominent part throughout. With a straightforwardness far removed from the pomp of the opening sections of some of the other concertos, the initial Allegro movement begins in march rhythm with the principal theme, which the piano soon takes up, amplifying and ornamenting it in virtuoso manner. Jean and Brigitte Massin have averred that `nervous instability and emo­tional ambivalence constitute the very object' of this movement, right from the exposition of its two themes, and C.M. Girdlestone goes on to describe the development as a 'fantasy', a con­stantly modulating, almost Romantic episode, elusive in places, and at times anguished. In a letter dated 9 June 1784 Mozart remarks to his sister Nannerl that none of the slow movements in any of the first four 1784 concertos is an Adagio. The Andante here, a sort of rondo, treated very freely and, like the Allegro, blending profundity and serenity, is of an amplitude rarely attained.

The intensely expressive theme, with a hint of the plaintive, is presented on the strings and developed by the orchestra before being taken up by the piano. Soon the atmosphere becomes more dramatic and intense, by means of bold modula­tions leading the listener into more and more remote keys. Tradition has it that when Mozart was writing this concerto he bought a goldfinch, whose song was the inspiration for the joyous theme of the Allegretto, the rondo-variation move­ment which closes the work with the sprightly abandon of a comic-opera finale.

In 1785, at the time when he was completing his Concerto in D minor, K.466, Mozart was at the height of his reputation as a virtuoso pianist and composer for the piano. Several months earlier he had taken a step which was to have a profound influence on his life and music: his initiation into freemasonry. Completed on ro February 1785, the D minor concerto, though treated with immense freedom, seethes with a tragic grandeur, and is one more admirable testament to the composer's maturity, having a secure place among his finest concertos. For Mozart D minor – the key of the Requiem and the overture to Don Giovanni– is, of course, associated with powerful emotion or despair, and the dark energy of Don Giovanni can from time to time be felt in this concerto. As Theodore de Wyzewa has written: 'The ghost of Don Giovanni already looms before the master.' And less than a month later another masterpiece came into being: the Concerto in C, K.467.

On 14 February 1785 Leopold Mozart, visiting Vienna, recounted his son's manifold activities in a letter to his daughter, telling her about the first performance of K.466 at a subscription concert before a celebrity audience. Apparently the over­worked Mozart had not even had time to correct the copies of the orchestral parts of this work, which is so full of pathos that it had brought tears to his father's eyes.

The anxious, hollow string syncopations which open the Allegro, over triplets in the basses, exude an immense grandeur. After the second theme has been presented on flute and oboes, the piano states a completely new idea, laden with emotion, which C.M. Girdlestone likens to a recitative, and which has its continuation in a passage of rippling semiquavers. The develop­ment section is full of nervous tension, soloist and orchestra sharing a passionate dialogue which does not let up, and is never quite swept away by the intervention of a few less sombre episodes. Alfred Einstein stressed the contrast between the menacing power of the orchestra and the moving lamentation of the soloist. There is no known cadenza by Mozart for this Allegro; the young Beethoven, though, composed no less than two for the concerto, one for each of the fast move­ments, showing just how much he appreciated the score. The central Romanze is the only example of a movement thus designated in Mozart's piano concertos. It opens in peace and serenity, offering a marvellous contrast with the preceding move­ment; it is the piano which very simply introduces the restful melody of the principal theme and later the second idea, supported by the strings. There is, though, no more violent contrast in Mozart's music than that between the calm of this B flat major interlude and the tempest which follows: suddenly modulating to G minor, the movement is transformed into a furiously stormy fantasia, with a torrent of virtuoso triplet figures and hand-crossings sweeping performers and listeners right back into the anguish of the first movement. As calm is restored, the piano gradu­ally loses its virtuoso thrust, and out of the newly restored peace re-emerges the theme of the romance, with added touches of woodwind coloration. The concluding Allegro assai, a cross between rondo and sonata-form movement, anticipates the finale of Beethoven's third piano concerto. Entering unexpectedly on its own, the piano impetuously states the rondo theme, and the entire movement is centred on the struggle between drama and poetry, between tragic and joyful motifs. Beginning in D minor, this finale ends in a limpid D major whose joyfulness finally triumphs over the generally dramatic character of the work as a whole.

Adelaide de Place Translation: Hugh Graham

ecording Usher Hall, Edinburgh (UK), 8 & 9.IX.2005 Producer & balance engineer Philip Hobbs (Lynn Records)
Executive producer Alain Lanceron
Cover photo © Ana Bloom/Virgin Classics
Design Marc Ribes
Publisher Bàrenreiter
Piano technician Ulrich Gerhartz