Piano Concerto No. 27 (Mozart)

• 1. Introduction

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  Piano Concerto No. 27 in B major, K. 595, was the last piano concerto Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart completed. It was first performed early in 1791, the year he died.

  On its surface the story sounds simple, a farewell to a form Mozart had mastered for over a decade. But almost nothing about this concerto's origins is settled. Scholars disagree about when Mozart actually wrote it. They disagree just as much about where, and by whom, it was first performed. One researcher has even questioned whether it was written for a concert hall at all.

  The clues turn up in unusual places. They include the physical paper Mozart wrote on and a pupil who may have taken the stage in his place. The orchestra itself is missing instruments he used in nearly every other work from this period.

• 2. A Disputed Date

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  The manuscript that survives carries a date in Mozart's own hand: the 5th of January 1791. On paper, this looks like straightforward evidence for when the concerto was written. But researchers who have examined that same manuscript do not agree.

  Alan Tyson took a different approach, studying the physical paper Mozart used rather than the handwritten date. His analysis indicated that paper stock circulated only between December 1788 and February 1789, well before the date on the manuscript.

  Simon Keefe has gone further still, dating the concerto to 1788 outright. Wolfgang Rehm reaches the opposite conclusion, holding that Mozart composed the work in late 1790 and early 1791, close to the manuscript's own date. Cliff Eisen took up the disagreement directly, addressing the dating controversy in his review of a published facsimile of the score.

  The argument over when the concerto was written has never fully settled. A parallel dispute, over where it was first played, has not settled either.

• 3. Two Possible Debuts

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  One candidate for the premiere is a concert on the 4th of March 1791, held at Jahn's Hall. Mozart performed there alongside the clarinetist Joseph Beer. If that concert truly was the debut, it also marked Mozart's last appearance at a public concert. He fell ill later that year and died on the 5th of December 1791.

  A different account points to a different stage entirely. Mozart's own pupil, Barbara Ployer, may have premiered the concerto at a public concert in the Palais Auersperg in January 1791.

  Neither account can be confirmed outright, and a third theory sidesteps the question of a debut concert altogether.

• 4. Built For The Parlor

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  Mozart scholar Wolf-Dieter Seiffert has argued that the concerto was never written with a particular concert in mind at all. In his view, Mozart composed it for publication, aimed at buyers who wanted sheet music rather than a ticket. Those buyers were mostly amateurs, intending to play the concerto at home with a small group of friends rather than in a concert hall.

  Three details support Seiffert's theory. The piano part itself is not especially difficult, well within reach of a skilled amateur. The orchestra is modest in size. Mozart also wrote out full cadenzas and lead-ins, passages he would normally have improvised rather than written down.

  This combination of traits shows up in only one other place in Mozart's output. It appears in the concertos K. 413-415, the only other piano concertos he published during his lifetime.

  Whether the concerto was written for a stage or a music stand at home, the score itself still holds its own surprises.

• 5. Inside The Music

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  The scoring is thinner than in Mozart's other late piano concertos: flute, two oboes, two bassoons, two horns in B, solo piano, and strings. Every other concerto from this period, except No. 23, calls for trumpet and timpani as well; Piano Concerto No. 27 leaves both out.

  All three of the concerto's movements are written in a major key, yet minor keys keep surfacing underneath. The first movement's second theme appears in the dominant minor, and a remote minor key appears early in that movement's development section. The Larghetto dips into the tonic minor around its middle.

  Mozart wrote down his own cadenzas for the first and third movements rather than leaving them to improvisation. Simon Keefe has studied the concerto closely, highlighting its distinctive character and stylistic experiments alongside Mozart's other works in the genre.

  The main theme of the finale turns up again in Mozart's song 'Sehnsucht nach dem Frühling,' K. 596, sharing a melody but not an instrument. In the Köchel catalogue, that song sits immediately after this concerto, one number over, as if the tune simply changed rooms.