Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 - 1791)
Piano Concerto No.22 in E Flat Major, K. 482
Piano Concerto No.11 in F Major, K. 413
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
w rote 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considerable changes in keyboard instruments, as the harpsichord was gradually superseded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 performed his Piano
Concerto in E fiat major, K. 482, on 23rd December at the Burgtheater in Vienna
as an entr'acte between the parts of Karl Ditters von Dittersdorf's oratorio Esther, directed by the court composer Antonio
Salieri in the presence of the Emperor, Archduke Franz and Princess Elisabeth. The
concerto was the second of two Advent concerts arranged by the Tonkünstler-Sozietät for
its widows and orphans. This was presumably not the first performance, since the concerto
seems to have been designed for a series of three subscription concerts Mozart had
organised, and the preceding concertos at least had not been finished so early, a week
before it was needed.
The E fiat Concerto
is scored for clarinets instead of flute and pairs of bassoons, horns, trumpets and drums.
The strings, as in the immediately preceding concertos, have divided violas. The full
orchestra starts the work with a brief and emphatic figure, answered by a gently
descending sequence played by bassoons and horns, to be echoed by clarinets and violins.
The orchestral exposition is linked to the soloist's version of the principal theme by a
seventeen bar solo introduction, after which the piano moves on to bravura scales and
arpeggios that accompany and then develop the material, before the sinister much more
placid second subject. The movement continues with much busy passage-work for the soloist
and a subtly varied recapitulation.
Muted strings open the C minor Andante, a movement that had to
be repeated at the concert on 23rd December. The soloist varies the extended principal
theme, briefly accompanied by the strings, followed by an E fiat episode, scored for wind,
and allowing due contrast between the upper register of the clarinet and the Alberti bass
of its lower register. The soloist returns with a further variation of the principal
theme, leading to a second episode in which flute and bassoon engage in a C major
dialogue, after which a further variation of the main theme returns, leading to a coda.
The darker mood of the Andante is dispelled by the final rondo, introduced by the soloist,
accompanied by the strings, and varied by the introduction of an A flat Andantino, a
minuet, played at first by clarinets and bassoons and echoed by the soloist, after which
the rondo theme re-appears to lead the music to its conclusion.
Writing to his father in Salzburg 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 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 Concerto in F major, K.
413, cannot be precisely dated. It appears to have been unwritten on 28th
December, when Mozart told his father that only one of the three concertos had been
finished, but was probably completed soon after that letter, and may have been played at
concerts early in January, possibly on 11th January, when Aloysia Lange, Mozart's
sister-in-law, who had won Mozart's attentions in Mannheim, sang an aria he had written
for her. Original cadenzas survive for the first two movements. Again scored for an
accompaniment of oboes, horns and strings, the first movement opens with repeated chords
from the whole orchestra, followed at once by a principal theme that must have given
satisfaction to all, the soloist entering with another fragment of a theme, before
proceeding to the first subject, which is then developed. The movement continues with a
wealth of thematic invention. The B flat Larghetto offers that mixture of joy and sorrow
that Mozart knew so well how to convey and is followed by a rondo, derived from a minuet
theme, announced first by the orchestra.
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 pal Kadosa, becoming assistant to the latter on his
graduation in 1974. Jand6 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 Tatrai, Andras Mihaly, Miklós
Perenyi, Denes Kovacs, Jeno 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.
Mátyás Antal
Mátyás Antal was born in 1945 into a family of musicians and
completed his training at the Ferenc Liszt Academy in Budapest as a flautist and a
conductor. In 1972, the year after his graduation, he joined the Hungarian State
Orchestral as a flautist, but in the last ten years has been principally employed as a
conductor, specialising initially in contemporary music. In 1984 he was appointed
chorus-master of the Budapest Choir and two years later became associate conductor of the
Hungarian State Orchestra. He appears frequently as a conductor in his native country as
well as in East and West Germany, Austria and Greece, and has made a number of recordings
for Hungaroton.