The concerto has the following three movements:
- Allegro in C minor
- Larghetto in E-flat major
- Allegretto (Variations) in C minor
It is scored for flute, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, horns, trumpets, timpani and strings. Of the Mozart piano concertos, this one has the most complete scoring. It is the only one scored for both oboes and clarinets. It is also the only late Mozart piano concerto in which the soloist plays after the cadenza in the first movement, here adorning an orchestral argument based on the extremely chromatic opening theme of the work with arpeggios, all the way through to the quiet close. The whole performance lasts roughly 30 minutes.
Long considered to be one of Mozart's greatest works, Arthur Hutchings has described it to be the most "concerted" of all the concertos (i.e. the most integrated). Girdlestone has also effectively claimed it as the greatest. Ludwig van Beethoven took particular inspiration for his own music from this concerto.
The work has obvious musical antecedents in Joseph Haydn's Symphony No. 78, also in C minor and from which the Concerto's opening statement is drawn. Jonathan Stock has analysed in detail Mozart's use of woodwind timbre in the instrumentation of the concerto's slow movement. Chris Goertzen has mapped the structure of the slow movement.
The concerto was first published in parts in 1800. The manuscript of the concerto resided in the 1960's at the Royal College of Music.
References
Sources
- Girdlestone, C. M. Mozart's Piano Concertos. Cassell, London.
- Hutchings, A. A Companion to Mozart's Piano Concertos, Oxford University Press.
- Mozart, W. A. Piano Concertos Nos. 23-27 in full score. Dover Publications, New York.
- Tovey, D. F. Essays in musical analysis, volume 3, Concertos. Oxford University Press.
External links
- BBC Discovering Music (browse for .ram file for this work)
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Last updated on Saturday May 31, 2008 at 16:30:35 PDT (GMT -0700)
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