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

[Pulcinella]

Apologies for taking the thread off topic!
I should know better (but I was appalled to see Gramophone use the attribution in 1973!).

Back to K488 please.
I did in fact have the complete Anda set of concertos on LP, in a bright red box.

[smittims]

Thanks, pastoralguy. Please don't apologise for repeating an anecdote. I hadn't seen that one before and found it delightful!

I last saw that bright red box in the Oxfam bookshop in Shrewsbury. It may still be there if anyone wants it.

[richardfinegold]

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.

I saw a recital , in Chicago, by a Pianist with that name who was on the faculty of the University of Illinois-Urbana (2.5 hr drive Tom Chicago). Same artist?

[richardfinegold]

Is there any love here for Casadesus/Szell? That was my first set of Mozart PCs and I still play them frequently

[Pulcinella]

I saw a recital , in Chicago, by a Pianist with that name who was on the faculty of the University of Illinois-Urbana (2.5 hr drive Tom Chicago). Same artist?

This is from his Wiki article:

Prior to joining the faculty at Florida State University, Hobson served as a music professor at the faculty of the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. He has been a juror on a number of international music competitions. Hobson is the father of NPRHere & Now host Jeremy Hobson.

[Retune]

Yes, it's the same pianist. He made a couple more recordings with EMI CfP (Chopin preludes and Rachmaninov transcriptions) and one with Hyperion (Huss and Schelling concertos), but most of his prolific releases (including complete editions of Chopin and the Beethoven sonatas) have been on small labels.

https://www.leedspiano.com/competitor/ian-hobson/

[mikealdren]

Is there any love here for Casadesus/Szell? That was my first set of Mozart PCs and I still play them frequently

Yes but I don't have their K488, only K467 and K537.

[Mandryka]

Yudina's recording is so famed I feel the urge to mention it. Unfortunately I can't find a clip of the opening of the film The Death of Stalin.

[richardfinegold]

Yudina's recording is so famed I feel the urge to mention it. Unfortunately I can't find a clip of the opening of the film The Death of Stalin.

I actually bought the movie from Apple. I had several houseguests that wanted to see it and apparently renting wasn’t an option. However, while there was an actress playing Yudina, I don’t know if an actual recording featuring her was used

[Darloboy]

This used to be a regular on BaL, having been featured in 1963, 1965, 1969 and 1981. It hasn't been covered since then and I have no idea what any of the previous recommendations were.

[CallMePaul]

For some reason, none of his piano works (concerti or sonatas) is in a key with more than 3 accidentals, and I think the same is true of his other works (can't be sure about individual opera numbers). Mozart was an outstanding pianist so I'm sure he could have played in, say, G sharp minor or D flat major had he wished. I suspect that orchestral players may not have been as good sight-readers as today's are and that the same would have been true of the amateur pianists at whom many of the sonatas were marketed.

Since writing the above I have looked through my collection and found a CD of Mozart piano trios played by the Rautio Piano Trio, in which the fortepiano is tuned to an unspecified "unequal temperament". I have vague membories of a trailer for a programme about equal temperament some years ago which stated that Mozart did not use it, which surprised me given that he was familiar with the "48". This would probably explain why he did not write in keys such as G# minor, which would cause major tuning problems in any unequal tempered system.

[smittims]

Indeed. Mozart's choice of keys in his works shows that he was acutely sensitive to their differences,so it's not surprisng that he preferred more natural tuning systems.

I believe (though I don't have the references to hand) that research has suggested that Bach's 'Well-Tempered' system was not our modern equal-temperament , so that the more remote keys in the '48 would still have had a tangy sound of their own, which Mozart possibly relished.

[vinteuil]

Indeed. Mozart's choice of keys in his works shows that he was acutely sensitive to their differences,so it's not surprisng that he preferred more natural tuning systems.

I believe (though I don't have the references to hand) that research has suggested that Bach's 'Well-Tempered' system was not our modern equal-temperament , so that the more remote keys in the '48 would still have had a tangy sound of their own, which Mozart possibly relished.

... yes : it is unlikely that Bach used equal temperament for the WTC. There were various 'well-tempered' tuning systems available at the time which allowed playing in all keys. I believe the current understanding is that Werckmeister III was the one he favoured ; the seminal article on the subject was John Barnes "Bach's keyboard temperament" (Early Music 7/2 1979)

.

[Ein Heldenleben]

Indeed. Mozart's choice of keys in his works shows that he was acutely sensitive to their differences,so it's not surprisng that he preferred more natural tuning systems.

I believe (though I don't have the references to hand) that research has suggested that Bach's 'Well-Tempered' system was not our modern equal-temperament , so that the more remote keys in the '48 would still have had a tangy sound of their own, which Mozart possibly relished.

That might be true but then if you are that fastidious why write a fortepiano / piano concerto at all since the instruments don’t really sound in tune with each other even today. Fortepianos drift out of tune and on a warm evening at the Proms it’s a miracle if piano and woodwinds sound in tune by the finale. It’s often excruciating.

On piano tuning equal temperament is a compromise - you can cover all the keys - but try playing a low Dflat and the f above middle C and the problems immediately become apparent - even worse if you slide up a semitone - keep doing it and it almost nausea inducing . I suppose there are now electric pianos which allow just intonation in each key at the flick of a switch.
Theres a good book on all this “How Equal Temperament ruined music and why you should care.”
I don’t like hearing choirs singing with piano much for this very reason . And even the piano less jazz of Gerry Mulligan and the West coast cool of the fifties feels temperamentally different from piano comped jazz.

[Pulcinella]

Is there any love here for Casadesus/Szell? That was my first set of Mozart PCs and I still play them frequently

Quite enjoyed this earlier today, though it seemed a bit bottom heavy and clunky (the version I streamed simply said Remastered), but not as much as the accompanying K482 was!