Piano concertos by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

• 1. Introduction

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  Mozart's piano concertos hold a secret embedded in a letter he wrote to his father. Describing three of his Vienna concertos, Mozart stated his governing aim: 'There are passages here and there from which the connoisseurs alone can derive satisfaction; but these passages are written in such a way that the less learned cannot fail to be pleased, though without knowing why.' Twenty-one of his twenty-seven numbered concertos are original compositions for solo piano and orchestra. Most were written during the Vienna subscription concert series of 1784-86, when Mozart himself performed them. For a long time after his death, these works were largely neglected. Donald Tovey's Essay on the Classical Concerto in 1903 began their rehabilitation. How could music designed to please both experts and coachmen vanish from the repertoire? And what makes these concertos now rank among the greatest music Mozart ever produced?

• 2. Ancestors and Apprenticeship

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  The Fifth Brandenburg Concerto by J. S. Bach had already placed the keyboard in the most prominent position among the instruments. The form Mozart inherited stretched further back still, to the alternation of orchestral tutti and solo passage rooted in Baroque operatic arias. Vivaldi established both the three-movement concerto structure and the division of the concerto into six sections. J. C. Bach, whom Mozart admired, made one pivotal structural contribution. He allowed the keyboard soloist to introduce entirely new thematic material on its first solo entry, rather than merely elaborating what the orchestra had already stated.

  Mozart's four earliest numbered concertos, K. 37, 39, 40 and 41, were orchestral arrangements of sonata movements by other composers. Three unnumbered concertos, K. 107/1, 2 and 3, are arrangements of J. C. Bach's piano sonatas. These are his Op. 5 Nos. 2, 3 and 4, which Bach had composed by 1766. Handwriting analysis places the Mozart arrangements around 1771 or 1772. Concerto No. 5, K. 175, written in December 1773, was his first genuine original effort in the genre and proved popular at the time. Concerto No. 6, K. 238, was completed in January 1776. It was the first Mozart concerto to introduce new thematic material in the piano's opening solo section. This was the structural step J. C. Bach had pioneered.

  Concerto No. 9, K. 271, completed in January 1777, marked a turning point in his approach to the form. Known as the 'Jenamy' concerto, it shows an unusually dramatic opening. The piano interrupts the orchestral introduction after only one-and-a-half bars, a structural irregularity that announces a composer prepared to break convention deliberately. The final concerto of the Salzburg years was K. 365 for two pianos. In November 1778, in Mannheim, Mozart began a fragment, K. Anh. 56/315f, for himself on piano and violinist Ignaz Fränzl. When Elector Charles Theodore moved the court to Munich, Fränzl stayed behind, and the work was abandoned. Mozart settled in Vienna in 1781, and within eighteen months he had three new concertos ready for his own concert programs.

• 3. The Vienna Masterworks

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  Concerto No. 14, K. 449, was completed on the 9th of February 1784. It opened the most productive sequence in the history of the piano concerto. From that date through March 1786, Mozart completed eleven works of the first order. Written for his pupil Barbara Ployer, K. 449 carries the first clear influence of Mozart's operatic writing on his instrumental voice. Records show he completed No. 16, K. 451, only one week after No. 15, K. 450.

  Concertos Nos. 11, 12 and 13, written in the autumn of 1782, immediately preceded the main creative burst. K. 414 in A major, the second of the three, is often described as 'Tyrolean' in character. Many consider the last movement of No. 13, K. 415, to be the best of the group. Its first theme enters as a canon in the orchestral opening.

  The year 1785 produced the most widely known pair among the concertos. No. 20 in D minor, K. 466, and No. 21 in C major, K. 467, were completed within the same month. K. 466 was the first of Mozart's concertos to be entirely in a minor key. K. 467, its contrasting companion, is the sunny C major counterpart.

  March 1786 yielded two more masterpieces within a single month. No. 23 in A major, K. 488, became one of the most consistently popular works in the series. Its slow movement is in F minor, the only key Mozart used there in any work. He followed it with No. 24 in C minor, K. 491, a dark and passionate work. Its finale, a set of variations, has been called 'sublime.' Mozart kept the score of K. 488 within his family and close circle of friends and did not publish it in his lifetime. No. 25 in C major, K. 503, completed in December 1786, closed the subscription series. It is one of the most expansive of all classical concertos, rivaling Beethoven's fifth piano concerto.

  No. 26, K. 537, completed in February 1788 and known as the 'Coronation' concerto, has a mixed reputation. The last concerto, No. 27, K. 595, was completed on the 5th of January 1791. It was the first work from the final year of Mozart's life. Its texture is sparse, intimate and elegiac. K. 595 was also the last piano concerto he ever wrote.

• 4. The Mozartian Concept

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  Arthur Hutchings named the two failures that any piano concerto risks. It could become a symphony with occasional piano solos. It could become a virtuoso fantasia with incidental orchestral decoration. Mozart steered between these two in every mature work. His solutions are so varied that none of the mature concertos resembles any other on more than a broad structural level.

  As many as six or more distinct themes appear in a typical Mozart prelude. Their purpose is not to complete a thematic exposition but to generate a sense of expectation leading toward the piano's entry. If the prelude functioned as a full sonata form, the piano's arrival would seem almost incidental. Mozart made the piano entry an event of theatrical importance in every concerto and varied it considerably from work to work.

  In Concerto No. 19, K. 459, theme C never reappears after the prelude. Themes E and F appear only to close the first movement. Mozart's mature concertos nearly all introduce new thematic material when the piano plays its first exposition. The two exceptions are K. 488 in A major and K. 537. A prelude scheme of themes A, B, C, D and E might later reappear as A, B, A, D, A. This flexibility meant the listener could not predict the material's order.

  No. 16, K. 451, illustrates how the piano-orchestra relationship deepens in the mature works. Hutchings described the later concertos as genuinely earning the title 'concertos for piano and orchestra' rather than mere 'piano concertos.' Mozart's middle sections differ from those in Beethoven's concertos: rather than genuinely developing themes, Mozart typically condenses, reshuffles, and modulates them. The one clear exception is No. 25, K. 503, whose middle section unfolds as genuine development, something Mozart rarely attempted in this form.

• 5. Instruments and Improvisation

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  Mozart's original piano was returned to Vienna in 2012 after an absence of roughly two hundred years. It was used in a concert shortly after its return. This was the same instrument he had kept at his home and carried through the streets to various concert venues. The fortepianos of Mozart's time were quieter and more blending than the modern concert grand. Those built by his friend Stein and by Anton Walter were particularly well suited to his purposes.

  An almanac from the Burgtheater in Vienna dated 1782 records a theatre orchestra of 35 players. It lists six first and six second violins, four violas, three cellos, and three basses. There were also pairs of flutes, clarinets, oboes, and bassoons, with natural horns, trumpets, and a timpanist. The more intimate concertos, including K. 413, 414 and 415, were designed to be playable with just a string quartet.

  Mozart wrote 'CoB,' meaning col Basso or 'with the basses,' in the lower stave of the piano during tutti passages. Whether this indicates he played a basso continuo role throughout the tuttis remains disputed. The Artaria edition of Concertos Nos. 11-13, published in 1785, included figured bass for the piano. Charles Rosen argued against the practice. The concerto's drama depends on contrast between solo and tutti sections, and a piano playing through the tutti would undermine that contrast.

  Philip Karl heard Mozart perform Concertos Nos. 19 and 26 in Frankfurt am Main in 1790. He reported that Mozart embellished slow movements 'tenderly and tastefully once one way, once another.' The embellishment varied 'according to the momentary inspiration of his genius.' Mozart wrote to his sister in 1784 acknowledging that something was missing in the slow movement of K. 451. He sent her an embellished version; a copy is preserved at St. Peters Archabbey in Salzburg. Mozart's own cadenzas survive for the majority of the concertos. The cadenzas for K. 466 and K. 467 appear to be missing. Mozart's father may have mentioned them in letters to his sister in 1785.

• 6. Reception and Rediscovery

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  Clara Schumann's concert repertoire contained only three of the Mozart piano concertos. She first performed No. 20, K. 466, in concert in 1857. She added No. 24, K. 491, in 1863 and No. 10 for two pianos, K. 365, in 1883. In the nineteenth century, the major-key concertos were almost entirely absent from concert programs. Peter Gutmann calls K. 466 'the most historically popular and influential' of the concertos, describing it as 'overtly dark, dramatic and impassioned.' Beethoven (WoO 58), Brahms (WoO 16), and Clara Schumann all wrote cadenzas for it.

  Cuthbert Girdlestone's study of the concertos was originally published in French in 1940. Arthur Hutchings' analysis followed in 1948. Hans Tischler published a structural and thematic analysis in 1966. Work by Charles Rosen and by Daniel N. Leeson and Robert Levin continued the examination. Together these studies restored the full span of the concertos to serious critical attention.

  Then in 1967, a Swedish film gave one concerto an identity it has never shed. Bo Widerberg's Elvira Madigan told a doomed love story between a Danish tightrope walker and a Swedish officer. It used the slow movement of K. 467 so prominently that listeners began calling the concerto 'Elvira Madigan.' The film itself has since been largely forgotten.

  Johann Anton André purchased most of the autographs from Mozart's widow in 1799. The bulk passed to the Prussian State Library in Berlin in 1873. During the Second World War, the Prussian collection was evacuated to the eastern front and was feared lost. In the 1970s it resurfaced in Poland and now rests in the Biblioteka Jagiellońska, the Jagiellonian Library, in Kraków. The autograph of K. 467 is held at the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York. K. 491 is at the Royal College of Music in London. Today, Nos. 20, 21 and 23 rank among the most recorded classical works in the repertoire. Beethoven's third piano concerto took its structural starting point directly from Mozart's No. 24. That concerto, completed on the 24th of March 1786, has been shaping what composers write for piano and orchestra ever since.