Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos. 12, 14 And 21

Description

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 - 1791)Piano Concerto No. 21 in C Major, K. 467 Piano Concerto No.12 in A Major, K. 414 Piano Concerto No.14 in E Flat Major, K. 449The solo concerto had become, during the eighteenth century, animportant vehicle for composer-performers, a form of music that had developedfrom the work of Johann Sebastian Bach, through his much admired sons CarlPhilipp Emanuel and Johann Christian, to provide a happy synthesis of solo andorchestral performance. Mozart wrote his first numbered piano concertos,arrangements derived from other composers, in 1767, undertaking furtherarrangements from Johann Christian Bach a few years later. His first attempt atwriting a concerto, however, had been at the age of four or five, described bya friend of the family as a smudge of notes, although, his father claimed, verycorrectly composed. In Salzburg as an adolescent Mozart wrote half a dozenpiano concertos, the last of these for two pianos after his return from Paris.The remaining seventeen piano concertos were written in Vienna, principally forhis own use in the subscription concerts that he organised there during thelast decade of his life.The second half of the eighteenth century also brought considerablechanges in keyboard instruments, as the harpsichord was gradually superseded bythe fortepiano or pianoforte, with its hammer action, an instrument capable ofdynamic nuances impossible on the older instrument, while the hammer-actionclavichord from which the piano developed had too little carrying power forpublic performance. The instruments Mozart had in Vienna, by the bestcontemporary makers, had a lighter touch than the modern piano, with action andleather-padded hammers that made greater delicacy of articulation possible, amongother differences. They seem weIl suited to Mozart's own style of playing, bycomparison with which the later virtuosity of Beethoven seemed to somecontemporaries rough and harsh.Mozart's Piano Concerto in C Major,K. 467, was entered in his catalogue of compositions with the date9th March, 1785, a month after his D MinorConcerto. Like its immediate predecessor it is scored for trumpetsand drums, as well as flute, pairs of oboes, bassoons and horns, and strings,with divided violas. It was first performed by the composer at the fifth of hisLenten Mehlgrube concerts on 11th March, the day after a concert in theBurgtheater for which he had used his new fortepiano with an added pedal-board,an instrument that his father remarks is constantly being taken out of thehouse for concerts at the Mehlgrube or in the houses of the aristocracy.The opening bars of the exposition, played by the strings, areanswered, in military style, by the wind, and there is a second theme of lesssignificance than a true second subject, which is reserved for the soloist'sexposition. The soloist enters at first with an introduction and brief cadenza,leading to a trill, while the strings again play the first part of theprincipal theme, answered by th