BaL 08.06.24 - Mozart: Piano concerto 23 in A major, K488

[oliver sudden]

It would have been quite difficult for contemporary orchestras to play in D flat and G flat . And I wonder whether the ins and outs of forfepiano tuning made Dflat and also Gflat a risk ?

Not so much a risk as a guarantee that the chords would sound as sour as all heck. I’m not completely up with how Mozart’s keys would sound in the tuning systems he had but I’m pretty sure that even if F# minor’s tonic chord sounded acceptable, the dominant would be very crunchy indeed, at least on a keyboard instrument.

It’s interesting to me that even in that movement the tutti spends a decent amount of time in A major, and even with material where the falling E-C# which begins the first movement is prominent. (He must have liked that interval. Not only in this concerto but in the clarinet music—it begins both the concerto and the quintet, and also the quintet’s finale.) He also has these constant slips up to G major chords, which would have been a lovely vision of consonance compared with the actual home key.

[silvestrione]

Absolutely agree .. but …

Those spare notes cry out for decoration - the problem is it needs to be Mozart’s ..

You are so right! Somewhere in Talking of Music Anthony Hopkins gives an example of how he thinks it should go...instead of 'bare bones', fleshed out in extravagant roulades, etc Since reading that, I've generally preferred it as written. Must see what Brautigam does...

[gurnemanz]

Walter Klien on Vox has been a firm favourite of mine in the Mozart Sonatas for several decades. I have a few versions of this concerto but still greatly enjoy Klien's K488 with Peter Maag and the Wiener Volksoperorchester, a classic Turnabout recording from 1969. I see Vox have just re-released it as download

[Barbirollians]

Been enjoying the early Barenboim/ECO record of K488 today.

[Barbirollians]

Now onto Solomon/Menges - forgotten just how marvellous this is.

The original Gramophone reviewer described it as the best performance of it he had heard on or off records - and one can hear why.

[smittims]

Yes, Solomon always sounds as if he had the time to be wise and thoughtful, as opposed to today's jet-setting virtuosi. Yet he lived a busy life. My mother heard him play in an aircraft hanger in South Wales c.1943 (about the time he recorded the Bliss concerto in Liverpool and the Beethoven C minor in Bedford). They were kept out of the Corporals' Mess so he could have his tea! I reckon he earned his promotion to the Red Label after the war.

[Ein Heldenleben]

Yes, Solomon always sounds as if he had the time to be wise and thoughtful, as opposed to today's jet-setting virtuosi. Yet he lived a busy life. My mother heard him play in an aircraft hanger in South Wales c.1943 (about the time he recorded the Bliss concerto in Liverpool and the Beethoven C minor in Bedford). They were kept out of the Corporals' Mess so he could have his tea! I reckon he earned his promotion to the Red Label after the war.

Solomon had one of fhe most wonderful touches and even scales of any pianist I’ve ever heard. I must have listened to the Menges Beethoven 1st PC hundreds of times.

[oliver sudden]

You are so right! Somewhere in Talking of Music Anthony Hopkins gives an example of how he thinks it should go...instead of 'bare bones', fleshed out in extravagant roulades, etc Since reading that, I've generally preferred it as written. Must see what Brautigam does...

On imslp there’s an ornamented version of several passages by Barbara Ployer, a student of Mozart’s. Very much worth a look.

Just for my ear, it can work without ‘extras’ on a modern piano just because there’s more sustain. On a period instrument there just ends up being too much silence.

While I’m editing: Ployer premiered KV459 and KV453, this is not just some random student…

[cloughie]

In seeking a K488 to listen to the first I came to was Jando on Naxos - perfectly serviceable and pleasant too as are the 491, 466 and 467 which make up the contents of the twofer box.

[Retune]

The ECO seem to have been the go-to band for Mozart piano concertos from the late 60s to the early 80s, with complete cycles from Barenboim, Perahia and Uchida/Tate. My introduction to K488 (and K491) was a 1982 EMI Classics for Pleasure cassette with the ECO under Alexander Gibson. The soloist was Ian Hobson, who had won the Leeds the year before. I couldn't find a copy of the CfP version when I later went looking for it on CD, but came across a reissue on Royal Classics that was cheap at the time, but packaged little better than a bootleg (Hobson's name isn't even on the cover). Sadly no publisher has used the original LP sleeve artwork for the CD or cassette releases - I'm not quite sure what the commissioned artist, David Inshaw, was thinking! Robin Golding in Gramophone thought the recording 'remarkable for its freshness and vitality', which it still is today. It deserves to be better known.

[Ein Heldenleben]

The ECO seem to have been the go-to band for Mozart piano concertos from the late 60s to the early 80s, with complete cycles from Barenboim, Perahia and Uchida/Tate. My introduction to K488 (and K491) was a 1982 EMI Classics for Pleasure cassette with the ECO under Alexander Gibson. The soloist was Ian Hobson, who had won the Leeds the year before. I couldn't find a copy of the CfP version when I later went looking for it on CD, but came across a reissue on Royal Classics that was cheap at the time, but packaged little better than a bootleg (Hobson's name isn't even on the cover). Sadly no publisher has used the original LP sleeve artwork for the CD or cassette releases - I'm not quite sure what the commissioned artist, David Inshaw, was thinking! Robin Golding in Gramophone thought the recording 'remarkable for its freshness and vitality', which it still is today. It deserves to be better known.

Yep well that’s David Inshaw for you . I have a print of his Dorset (?) cricket match with its famous conundrum : does the wicket keeper catch the ball? I think Harold Pinter owned the original.

[Pulcinella]

I see from that Gramophone review that number 21 is styled Elvira Madigan by them even back then (August 1983).
One might have expected better from them, surely?

[smittims]

I blame Deutsche Grammophon, who issued the Geza Anda recording (138 783) with a still from the film on the cover (the eponymous heroine in her straw hat) on the proven axiom of advertising, that more people will look at a picture of a young woman than at anything else.

The disc was first issued in 1962 but the picture may date from a revised sleeve. I have a date of 1967 for the film.

[Retune]

Earlier issues of the Geza Anda K467 had a portrait of the young Mozart on the sleeve, very much the 'china doll' image of the composer. Today I think the name of the film is mostly remembered just for its association with the concerto.

Isn't there a story that Anda was unimpressed by the Elvira Madigan cover - until they told him how many copies it was selling?

[pastoralguy]

I blame Deutsche Grammophon, who issued the Geza Anda recording (138 783) with a still from the film on the cover (the eponymous heroine in her straw hat) on the proven axiom of advertising, that more people will look at a picture of a young woman than at anything else.

The disc was first issued in 1962 but the picture may date from a revised sleeve. I have a date of 1967 for the film.

I know I’ve told these stories before so apologies for repeating them.

A friend of mine was at university in London with a friend who was fascinated by the cover of that album and the lovely woman who was pictured on the cover. He was delighted to find that the lovely woman was playing a recital in the Wigmore Hall. He was bitterly disappointed when a rather portly gentleman walked on to the stage to play Mozart. It took all his strength not to shout ‘That’s not Geza Anda!’

The other story was that Geza Anda was NOT happy with his Mozart Concerto recordings being used in a mere movie. He felt it diminished his art and the music itself. He was so unhappy that he spoke to his agent about hiring a lawyer to prevent this travesty and chastise Deutsche Grammophone for their appalling lack of taste. By this time, the record had sold in the tens of thousands and had entered the pop music charts which led to more people buying it to see what all the fuss was about. And then Anda received his first royalty cheque…. He then instructed his agent to contact DG to see if there might be other recordings of his that might also be appropriate for movies.