Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 - 1791)
Piano Concerto No.20 in D Minor, K. 466
Piano Concerto No.13 in C Major, K. 415
The solo concerto had become, during the eighteenth century, an
important vehicle for composer-performers, a form of music that had developed
from the work of Johann Sebastian Bach, through his much admired sons Carl
Philipp Emanuel and Johann Christian, to provide a happy synthesis of solo and
orchestral performance. Mozart wrote his first numbered piano concertos,
arrangements derived from other composers, in 1767, undertaking further
arrangements from Johann 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 of notes, although, his father claimed, very
correctly composed. In Salzburg as an adolescent Mozart wrote half a dozen
piano concertos, the last of these for two pianos after his return from Paris.
The remaining seventeen piano concertos were written in Vienna, principally for
his own use in the subscription concerts that he organised there during the
last decade of his life. The second half of the eighteenth century also brought
considerable changes in keyboard instruments, as the harpsichord was gradually
superseded by the fortepiano or pianoforte, with its hammer action, an
instrument capable of dynamic nuances impossible on the older instrument, while
the hammer-action clavichord from which the piano developed had too little
carrying power for public 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 that made greater delicacy of articulation
possible, 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 contemporaries rough and harsh.
Mozart entered the Piano Concerto in
D Minor, K. 466, in his new catalogue of compositions on 10th
February, 1785. It received its first performance at the Mehlgrube in Vienna
the following day in a concert at which the composer's father, the Salzburg
Vice-Kapellmeister Leopold Mozart, was present.
Leopold Mozart sent his daughter a description of the first of his
son's Lenten subscription concerts, remarking particularly on the fine new
concerto that was performed, a work that the copyist was still writing out when
he arrived, so that there had been no time to rehearse the final rondo. He
found his son busy from morning to night with pupils, composing and concerts,
and felt out of it, with so much activity round him. Nevertheless he was
immensely gratified by Wolfgang's obvious success. The next day Haydn came to
the apartment in Schulerstrasse and Mozart's second group of quartets dedicated
to the older composer were performed, to Haydn's great admiration.
The D Minor Piano Concerto,
the first of Mozart's piano concertos in a minor key, to be followed a year
later by the C Minor Concerto,
adds a new dimension of high seriousness to the form, a mood apparent in the
dramatic orchestral opening, with its mounting tension as the wind instruments
gradually join the strings. The concerto is scored for trumpets and drums, as
well as the now usual flute, pairs of oboes, bassoons and horns, with strings,
the violas divided. The soloist enters with a new theme, after an orchestral
exposition that has announced the principal material of the movement, and later
extends the second subject in a work in which the recurrent sombre mood of the
opening is only momentarily lightened by reference to brighter tonalities,
these too not without poignancy.
The slow movement, under the title Romance,
is in the form of a rondo, in which the principal theme, announced first by the
soloist, re-appears, framing intervening episodes. Its key of B Flat Major
provides a gentle contrast to the first movement, with a dramatic return to the
minor, G Minor, in the second episode. Trumpets and drums are, according to
custom, omitted from the movement, but return for the final rondo, into which
the soloist leads the way, again in the original key of D Minor. A triumphant D
Major version of an earlier theme interrupts a repetition of the minor
principal subject, after the cadenza, and brings the concerto to an end.
Cadenzas were presumably improvised by Mozart, and not written out, as they
would have been for his pupils or for his sister, and do not survive.
Beethoven, who had narrowly been prevented by his mother's final illness from
studying with Mozart in Vienna, provided cadenzas for the first and last
movements.
Writing to his father in Salzburg three years earlier, on 28th December
1782, Mozart, full of hope and enthusiasm, describes the set of three piano
concertos that he was to announce in January for his proposed subscription
concerts, works that were to be a happy medium between the easy and the
difficult, brilliant and pleasing, without being empty, with elements that
would afford satisfaction not only to the knowledgeable, but provide pleasure
to the less perceptive, although they would not know why. He was busy at the
same time as a teacher and performer, while completing a piano arrangement of
his German opera Die Entführung aus dem
Serail, which had proved very successful when it had been staged at
the Burgtheater in July. At the same time he had started work setting an ode on
Gibraltar, written by a Jesuit, commissioned by a Hungarian lady, and never
completed. On 15th January subscriptions were solicited in the Wiener Zeitung for the three concertos,
with optional wind parts, allowing performance also with the accompaniment of
only a string quartet. Money was slow in coming in, and in April Mozart was
writing to the publisher Sieber in Paris offering the three concertos, which he
claimed could be performed with full orchestra, the French preference, with
oboes and horns, or simply with four-part string accompaniment. The concertos,
K. 413 - 415, were published in 1785 by Artaria in Vienna.
The third concerto of the set, in C Major, written early in 1783, was
first performed in the presence of the Emperor at a concert in the Burgtheater
on 23rd March 1783 devoted entirely to the music of Mozart. The programme also
included operatic and concert arias, one sung by Aloisia Lange, the Haffner Symphony, and the early D Major Piano Concerto, with Mozart as
soloist. He played the C Major concerto
again at a Burgtheater concert a week later, once more in the presence of the
Emperor, these royal occasions allowing the addition of trumpets and drums and
a pair of bassoons to the orchestra. The opening would hardly have met with
approval in Paris, which prided itself on the premier coup d'archet, a phrase
that Mozart found ridiculous enough. Instead the first violins enter alone,
imitated by the second violins and then by violas, cellos and double basses.
The movement has a larger element of counterpoint than in earlier concertos,
and allows the soloist greater chances for display. Originally Mozart had
contemplated a C Minor slow movement instead of the present F Major Andante, from which trumpets and
drums are, according to general custom, omitted. The final rondo is introduced
by the soloist, who follows the orchestral extension of the principal theme
with an unexpected Adagio in C
Minor, its profounder implications dispelled by the return of the rondo theme.
The movement has a final section which brings surprising further development
and a reappearance of the Adagio
before the work comes to an end.
Jeno Jandó
Jeno Jandó was born at Pécs, in south Hungary, in 1952. He started to
learn the piano when he was seven and later studied at the Ferenc Liszt Academy
of Music under Katalin Nemes and Pál Kadosa, becoming assistant to the latter
on his graduation in 1974. Jandó has won a number of piano competitions in Hungary
and abroad, including first prize in the 1973 Hungarian Piano Concours and a
first prize in the chamber music category at the Sydney International Piano
Competition in 1977. In addition to his many appearances in Hungary, he has
played widely abroad in Eastern and Western Europe, in Canada and in Japan.
He is currently engaged in a project to record all Mozart's piano
concertos for Naxos. Other recordings for the Naxos label include the concertos
of Grieg and Schumann as well as Rachmaninov's second
Concerto and Paganini Rhapsody
and Beethoven's complete piano sonatas.
Concentus Hungaricus
The Concentus Hungaricus was established in February 1985 by Peter Popa
and consists of leading members of the Budapest Symphony Orchestra under the
co-leadership of Ildikó Hegyi and Pál Andrássy .The 16 member ensemble has
worked with leading Hungarian and foreign musicians, including Vilmos Tátrai,
András Mihály, Miklós Perényi, Dénes Kovács, Jenö Jandó. György Pauk and
Viktoria Jagling, and performs frequently at home and abroad. The repertoire of
the group ranges from Purcell and Corelli to Schoenberg , Bartók and Alban
Berg, while recordings include extensive studio work and releases by Hungaroton
and Naxos.
András Ligeti
András Ligeti has been a conductor with the Budapest Symphony Orchestra
since 1985. Born in Pécs in 1953, he went on to study the violin at the Ferenc
Liszt Music School in Budapest, taking his Artist's Diploma in 1976. From that
date until 1980 he was leader of the orchestra of the Hungarian State Opera and
appeared as soloist in a number of European countries, as well as in Canada. He
was a member of the Eder Quartet and leader of the Jeunesse Chamber Ensemble.
In 1980 he won first prize in the Bloomington Sonata Competition, and during
the 1980-1981 season worked under Sir Georg Solti and as a pupil of Karl
Oesterreicher in Vienna. Until his appointment to the Radio Orchestra Ligeti
was a conductor with the State Opera. He has directed performances of a number
of contemporary works, in addition to his experience with the repertoire of the
opera house and his varied career as soloist, chamber musician and orchestral
conductor.