Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos. 17 And 18

Description

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 - 1791)Piano Concerto No.17 in G Major, K. 453 Piano Concerto No.18 in B Flat Major, K. 456The solo concerto had become, during the eighteenth century, animportant vehicle for composer-performers, a form of music that had developed from thework of Johann Sebastian Bach, through his much admired sons Carl Philipp Emanuel andJohann Christian, to provide a happy synthesis of solo and orchestral performance. Mozartw rote his first numbered piano concertos, arrangements derived from other composers, in1767, undertaking further arrangements from Johann Christian Bach a few years later. Hisfirst attempt at writing a concerto, however, had been at the age of four or five,described by a friend of the family as a smudge of notes, although, his father claimed,very correctly composed. In Salzburg as an adolescent Mozart wrote half a dozen pianoconcertos, the last of these for two pianos after his return from Paris. The remainingseventeen piano concertos were written in Vienna, principally for his own use in thesubscription concerts that he organised there during the last decade of his life.The second half of the eighteenth century also broughtconsiderable changes in keyboard instruments, as the harpsichord was gradually supersededby the fortepiano or pianoforte, with its hammer action, an instrument capable of dynamicnuances impossible on the older instrument, while the hammer-action clavichord from whichthe piano developed had too little carrying power for public performance. The instrumentsMozart had in Vienna, by the best contemporary makers, had a lighter touch than the modernpiano, with action and leather-padded hammers that made greater delicacy of articulationpossible, among other differences. They seem well suited to Mozart's own style of playing,by comparison with which the later virtuosity of Beethoven seemed to some contemporariesrough and harsh.In 1784 Mozart found himself much in demand in Vienna as aperformer. His mornings, he explained to his father, by way of excuse for writing to himso infrequently, were taken up with pupils and nearly every evening with playing, and forhis performances he was obliged to provide new music. The Piano Concerto in G major, K. 453, was the fourth ofsix written during the year, and bears the date 12th April in the index of hiscompositions that Mozart had begun to keep. It was written for his pupil Barbara vonPloyer, who played it during a concert at her father's summer residence in June, anoccasion to which Mozart had invited the composer Paisiello to hear both his pupil andthis and other new compositions.The concerto is scored for flute, with pairs of oboes, bassoonsand horns and the usual strings. The opening orchestral exposition brings its ownsurprising shift of tonality before the entry of the soloist with the first subject and amovement that continues with occasional darkening of colour and with a miraculousinterweaving of wind instruments with the rest of the orchestra to whic