Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos. 16 And 25 / Rondo, K. 386

Description

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 - 1791)Piano Concerto in D Major, K. 451 Piano Concerto in C Major, K. 503 Rondo in A Major, K. 386The solo concerto hadbecome, during the eighteenth century, an important vehide for composer-performers, a formof music that had developed from the work of Johann Sebastian Bach, through his muchadmired sons Carl Philipp Emanuel and Johann Christian, to provide a happy synthesis ofsolo and orchestral performance. Mozart w rote his first numbered piano concertos,arrangements derived from other composers, in 1767, undertaking further arrangements fromJohann Christian Bach a few years later. His first 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 ofnotes, although, his father claimed, very correctly composed. In Salzburg as an adolescentMozart wrote half a dozen piano concertos, the last of these for two pianos after hisreturn from Paris. The remaining seventeen piano concertos were written in Vienna,principally for his own use in the subscription concerts that he organised there duringthe last decade of his life.The second half of the eighteenthcentury also brought considerable changes in keyboard instruments, as the harpsichord wasgradually superseded by the fortepiano or pianoforte, with its hammer action, aninstrument capable of dynamic nuances impossible on the older instrument, while thehammer-action clavichord from which the piano developed had too little carrying power forpublic performance. The instruments Mozart had in Vienna, by the best contemporary makers,had a lighter touch than the modern piano, with action and leather-padded hammers thatmade greater delicacy of articulation possible, among other differences. They seem wellsuited toMozart’s own style of playing, bycomparison with which the later virtuosity of Beethoven seemed to some contemporariesrough and harsh. The PianoConcerto in C major, K. 503, is entered in Mozart's list of his compositionswith the date 4th December 1786 and was performed the following day at one of the fourAdvent concerts arranged at the Casino belonging to Mozart's earlier landlord, thepublisher Johann Thomas von Trattner, whose wife was one of his pupils. The Concerto wasplayed by Mozart in his Leipzig concert in 1789 and by his young pupil Hummel in Dresdenin the same year.The concerto is scored for flute,pairs of oboes, bassoons. horns, trumpets and drums, with strings, and opens with a granddeclamatory statement from the whole orchestra, suiting well the key of C major. Thejubilation of the opening is belied by the immediate intrusion of the minor, an elementthat also adds a darker colour to a new theme, introduced by the strings. The soloistmakes an at first hesitant appearance, growing in confidence and elaboration, before theorchestra breaks in with the first subject, now extended by the soloist, who is later tointroduce a second solo subject in the key of E fiat, a natural move from C minor,