Mozart wrote six piano concerti in 1784. Every distinct in environment, they served as dazzling automobiles to spotlight the composer’s ability as certainly one of Vienna’s famous person keyboard gamers.
Amongst these works, Piano Concerto No. 17 in G Main, Okay. 453 has a particular story. Mozart wrote it for his beloved scholar, Barbara (“Babette”) Ployer, the teenage niece of an adviser to the Salzburg imperial courtroom, who lived exterior of Vienna. Proudly, he invited the visiting Italian composer, Giovanni Paisiello, to one of many first performances. Mozart’s pleasure is clear in a letter he wrote to his father, Leopold:
Tomorrow Herr Ployer is giving a live performance within the nation at Döbling, the place Fräulein Babette is taking part in her new Concerto in G…I’m fetching Paisiello in my carriage, as I would like him to listen to each my pupil and my compositions.
Concerto No. 17 pulls us into to a magical drama of conversing instrumental voices. It’s music which appears to have drifted out of an imaginary Mozart opera. In these musical traces, we get a way of what’s being stated, even with out phrases and a particular plot. The woodwind voices (flute, two oboes, and two bassoons) play a very distinguished position. This expanded forged of instrumental “characters” would have shocked audiences on the time.
The primary motion (Allegro) begins as a cheerful navy march. A stream of melodies develop effortlessly, opening the door to a heat, charming musical dialog, punctuated with pleasant interjections. The dialog takes stunning and generally shadowy turns, with pleasant harmonic improvements. Mozart offered a written-out cadenza which is heard on the finish of the motion.
Leonard Bernstein as soon as remarked that if pressed to call an “all-time favourite piece of music,” it might be the G Main Concerto’s second motion (Andante), by which Mozart stands “on the peak of his lyrical powers, combining serenity, melancholy, and tragic depth in a single nice lyric improvisation.” It begins with a young theme in C main, launched by the strings after which growing right into a shimmering pastoral dialogue between the oboe, flute, bassoon, and horn. The solo piano enters with an intimate assertion of the theme, however quickly trails off. Following a pause, the music shifts instantly to a tragic, tempestuous G minor. With wrenching harmonic surprises, we enter a serene dreamscape, crammed with pathos and lament.
The ultimate motion (Allegretto—Presto) begins with a spirited theme which anticipates the fowl catcher Papageno’s aria in The Magic Flute. Slightly than the customary rondo, the motion unfolds as a sequence of adventurous variations on this theme. Charming sensible jokes abound. The ultimate moments erupt as a joyful Presto which surges with the glittering euphoria of an operatic finale.
Maybe Mozart’s theme was so catchy that it was hummed all through Vienna. Quickly after ending the Concerto, Mozart entered the store of a fowl vendor and heard a starling sing an approximation of the finale’s theme. The fowl grew to become a cherished pet in Mozart’s residence, and when it died just a few years later, he honored it with a funeral.
This 1986 recording options Mitsuko Uchida with Jeffrey Tate and the English Chamber Orchestra:
5 Nice Recordings
Featured Picture: “The Salzburg panorama sequence for Prince-Archbishop Rely Hieronymus Colloredo: Hohensalzburg” (1797), Albert Christoph Dies