Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos. 5 And 26 / Rondo, K. 382

Description

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 - 1791)Piano Concerto in D Major, K. 537 (Coronation) Piano Concerto in D Major, K. 175 Rondo in D Major, K. 382The 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 in 1779. Theremaining seventeen piano concertos were written in Vienna, principally for his own use inthe subscription 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 thelater virtuosity of Beethoven seemed to some contemporaries rough and harsh. By 1788 Mozart's popularity as a performer had begun to wane inVienna. The year before, the new opera Don Giovanni had been commissioned by the theatrein Prague, and was staged in Vienna in May 1788, but there was to be no new commission forVienna until the 1790 season, when performances of Cosifan tutte were curtailed by the death of the Emperor. The D major PianoConcerto, K. 537, was completed on 24th February, 1788, presumably with a view to a seriesof Lenten concerts, and we may suppose formed part of the programme for the Casinoconcerts in June which Mozart mentions in a letter to his fellow free-mason MichaelPuchberg, from whom he was obliged to borrow money during the summer. On his journey toBerlin with Prince Lichnowsky in 1789 he played the concerto before the Elector of Saxonyin Dresden, but the name by which the concerto has become known derives from itsperformance by Mozart on 15th October, 1790, in Frankfurt for the coronation in that cityof the new Emperor Leopold II. The event aroused relatively little interest and earned himlittl