No. 208 of the ongoing ITYWLTMT series of audio montages can be found in our archives at https://archive.org/details/pcast208 |
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The debate over which is the best Mozart piano concerto
cycle normally revolves around the following: Barenboim, Ashkenazy, Perahia and
Brendel. In this short series, we sampled from two “complete cycles” so far –
one by Mitzuko Uchida, and from the Perahia set. Today, I chose to share
examples from another set, that of Hungarian pianist Géza Anda set down with
the help of the Camerata Academica of the Salzburg Mozarteum, in sessions from
1961 and 1969.
The set, which I shared in a Chronique Du Disque from 2012, skips the three concertos for multiple keyboards. Anda was a
thoughtful and scholarly Mozartian, and indeed, this ground-breaking series
established standards for “modern” Mozart concerto interpretation, laying down
a path that Brendel, Perahia, and to a lesser degree Schiff have pursued.
I have used tracks from this set in past montages, including
the K. 467 concerto in a post where I provide more notes on Mr. Anda. The
concerti I chose today to complete this four montage series are from the middle
period – concertos 16, 18 and 19.
Mozart composed the Concerto No. 16 for performance at a
series of concerts at the Vienna venues of the Trattnerhof and the Burgtheater
in the first quarter of 1784, where he was himself the soloist. No. 18 is
nicknamed “Paradis” in reference to Maria Theresia Paradis (1759 –1824), an
Austrian pianist and composer who lost her sight at an early age, and for whom
Mozart may have written this Piano Concerto. As was the case for the “Jeune
Homme” concerto we sampled earlier, Mozart’s personal papers lead some scholars
to attribute this to unsubstantiated folklore.
In a montage from a few years back, I played another Anda
performance, this time of the concerto no. 25 in D Majorm nicknamed
"Coronation". This comes from his playing of the work at the time of
the coronation of Leopold II as Holy Roman Emperor in October 1790 in Frankfurt
am Main. At the same concert, Mozart also played the Piano Concerto No. 19, K.
459. We know this because when Johann André of Offenbach published the first
editions of both concertos in 1794, he identified them on their title pages as
being performed on the occasion of Leopold's coronation. This is why concerto
no. 19 is sometimes called the “second” coronation concerto.
I think you will love this music too
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