Early Mozart ‘piano’ concerti
Early in 2001 we released a CD in the series of the complete Mozart piano concertos. But are they by Mozart and are they piano concertos? Read on...
These early works date from 1767, when Mozart was only eleven years old. By this age he was well established as a child prodigy, and the previous year (1766) he had returned from a lengthy tour of Germany, the Low Countries, England and France. As well as his skills as a performer being well known, he was developing into a composer of some repute. Significantly, he was coming to know many of the most important composers and musical styles of the time. It was such influences that he adopted and adapted for his first attempts at the concerto form.
When a composer borrows, either from other composers’ works or from his own works, to create a new work, this is known as the ‘pasticcio’ technique. The four keyboard concertos which are numbered 1 to 4 (K37, K39–41) are such pasticcio works. With the exception of one movement based on a work by C. P. E. Bach (K40/III) and another (K37/II) based on an as-yet unknown source, they derive entirely from sonata movements by Raupach, Honauer, Schobert and Eckard, German composers who were based in Paris at the time of Mozart’s travels. And to add to the question of ‘how much is by Mozart’ it is undoubtedly the case that his father Leopold helped the young Wolfgang in forming these works into concertos: indeed, the autograph manuscripts of all four concertos are largely in Leopold Mozart’s hand. However — and this is not the place to go into the musicological detail – these works do unmistakably bear the mark of the young Mozart, and our recording will be of great interest to those who are perhaps familiar with the more popular of Mozart’s later piano concertos but are ready to explore his early influences and to see/hear his compositional education in process.
And are they for the piano? The soloist Robert Levin writes: ‘One of the features of this series that sets it apart from previous period instrument traversals of the Mozart concertos is their presentation on a variety of pianos, thus affording the listener the opportunity to experience the wide diversity of sound characteristics displayed by these instruments. The choice of harpsichord rather than piano for K37 and K39–41 reflects the fact that Mozart is not known to have given performances on the piano at the time he and his father prepared the ‘pasticcio’ concertos’.
So to return to the opening question: are they by Mozart and are they piano concertos? Make your own mind up by listening to the CD and reading the sleeve notes that accompany it — a pleasure awaits you whatever conclusion you come to.