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Piano Concerto No. 17
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

Born on January 27, 1756, in Salzburg.
Died on December 5, 1791, in Vienna.

Piano Concerto No. 17 in G Major, K. 453

I.   Allegro (11:30’)
II.  Andante (10:30’)
III. Allegretto. Finale: Presto (8’)

Last performed by the Wichita Symphony on January 11 and 12, 1992. Santiago Rodriguez, piano; Gustav Meier, conductor.

 

For newcomers to classical music, the repertoire can seem confusing with works of similar titles differentiated by sequential numbers. Even more confusing are the catalog assignments like Mozart's Köchel ('K'), Bach's BWV (Bach Werke-Verzeichnis) numbers, or the generic "Opus" that may or may not correspond to the chronological order of the works. We talk about Haydn's one-hundred-and-four symphonies, Mozart's forty-one, and Beethoven's nine. Occasionally, some instrumental pieces gain titles, such as Mozart's "Jupiter" Symphony and Beethoven's "Pastoral" Symphony or Haydn's "London" Symphonies. These titles are rarely ascribed to the composer but often to publishers seeking monetary profits. Nicknamed works often influence a work's popularity with the public.

When we speak about concertos, the numbers often become more manageable with Beethoven's five for piano, two for piano by composers such as Chopin, Mendelssohn, Liszt, and Brahms. And then there are twenty-seven piano concertos by Mozart, which collectively mark one of the crowning achievements of classical music.

All too often, as is the case here in Wichita, audiences hear primarily Mozart's Piano Concertos numbered between twenty and twenty-seven. Pianists tend to favor these as examples of Mozart's "mature" style. We don't have the opportunity as often to hear those written just a year or two earlier. This concert is an opportunity to experience one of the exquisite and brilliant concertos numbered under twenty.

Piano concertos became Mozart's principal vehicle for showcasing his talents before the public after his move to Vienna from Salzburg in 1781. Beginning with the Concerto no. 11 (K.413), between 1782 and 1786, Mozart composed fifteen piano concertos.

The winter of 1784 found Mozart at the peak of his popularity as a pianist and composer. Mozart found considerable demands on his time in preparation for the busy Lenten season of concerts, during which theaters were generally more available due to the hiatus of resident companies. He scheduled about two dozen concerts, and for many of them, Mozart needed to produce new music. Realizing the pressure, he wrote in February, "At this time, I have to write works that bring in money."

Between February 9 and April 12, we know that he completed four piano concertos (K.449, K.450, K.451, and K.453) and the Quintet for Piano and Winds, K.452, which he described as one of the "best I have written." He would compose five piano concertos altogether in 1784. In addition to composing and performing, he was in demand as a teacher. Writing to his father on March 3, Mozart summed up his existence: "Pupils consume my entire morning, almost every evening I perform," and "of necessity, I must play new things." In Mozart's day, concertgoers considered "good" music to be new music. There was little interest in the music of the past.

How he managed to accomplish everything is a tribute to his diligence and discipline. He woke early, usually by 6 a.m., to begin composing by 7. By 10 a.m., he would make the rounds of his students until lunch, which was generally sometime between 1 and 3 p.m. In the evening, he would perform, most often in private salons of Vienna's highest courts and palaces. Returning home late, he usually composed for another hour or two before retiring by 1 a.m. It had to be exhausting, and Mozart confessed as much in a letter stating that he had "become tired of late from playing so much, but no small credit to me, my listeners never tired. I have so much to compose, and not a minute must be lost." This schedule often required him to work simultaneously on several compositions at once. Despite his fatigue, he kept at his work.

All of the efforts paid off. According to a chart in Maynard Solomon's biography of Mozart, 1784 was Mozart's most profitable year earning approximately 3720 florins. Modern-day researchers established that this would be roughly the equivalent of $40,000 - $50,000 in today's dollars, an amount suitable to earn Mozart and his family an upper-middle-class Viennese lifestyle. Solomon estimates that Mozart earned 3000 florins from his performances, most of them at private salon engagements and the rest principally from teaching.

Mozart completed the G Major Concerto by April 10, 1784, the date he entered it in his new catalogue of compositions that he had begun on February 9 and maintained up until five days before his death in 1791. The work is dedicated to his 18-year-old student Barbara Ployer, to whom he had earlier dedicated another concerto, K.449, that Mozart completed in February 1784. [The concertos are sometimes referred to as the First and Second Ployer, but the nicknames don’t have the memorable cachet of Beethoven’s “Emperor Concerto” or Mozart’s “Coronation” Concerto, No. 26, K. 537]. We know that Ployer performed the concerto on June 13 at her family's country home in Döbling. Mozart conducted the orchestra hired for the occasion. In addition, Mozart performed the Quintet for Piano and Winds and the Sonata for Two Pianos, K. 448, the latter with Ployer. The concert had particular significance for Mozart, who wanted to show off before his guest, the acclaimed Italian composer Giovanni Paisiello, recently arrived in Vienna.

With the three concertos composed during the winter of 1784, Mozart begins to move towards a distinct and mature style in which he seeks to meld the virtuosity of the concerto form with the structure and emotional impact of the symphony. Some aspects of Johann Christian Bach's galant style of concerto remain evident. The string writing principally serves as an accompaniment. Fuller writing occurs in the orchestral ritornello, those longer sections of the piece before the piano's entrance and between its prominent solos. The steady eighth-note bass serving a rhythmic and harmonic function remains from an earlier style.

The keyboard part contains many virtuosic elements. Most of these lie in the figurations for the right hand. The left hand serves primarily to complete the harmony as chords but occasionally indulges in scales or arpeggiated harmonies across both hands. Some mid-18th century conventions remain, most notably in the rapid left-hand passages that an intermediate piano student would recognize as Alberti bass, named for the Italian composer Domenico Alberti (1710-1740), who used copious amounts of the pattern in his keyboard music. As Mozart wrote, these concertos "are bound to make the performer perspire."

In the earlier concerto (K.449) written for Miss Ployer just a few months earlier, Mozart had indicated that it could be performed "a Quattro," that is, with just a string quartet accompaniment and no winds. That was not the case with the G Major Concerto, K. 453. In the wind parts, Mozart seems intent on resolving some orchestral problems in the interaction between soloist and orchestra. It is easy to see why he might have had winds on his mind while working on this concerto concurrently with the Quintet.

The winds scored for a single flute, two oboes, and two bassoons make up the characteristic color of the concerto. It is here that the true genius of Mozart becomes evident. Throughout the concerto, the winds and piano interact like characters in an opera. The wind writing is much more advanced than that for the strings and demonstrates the lessons of counterpoint that Mozart had been working through concurrently while writing his set of string quartets dedicated to Haydn. The "other" Bach, Johann Sebastian, and Handel begin to influence the writing for the winds. Mozart had become familiar with these composers through a circle of men who gathered at Baron Gottfried van Swieten's home to study the music of the earlier generation. How Haydn and Mozart, and eventually Beethoven, would resolve the issues of counterpoint with classical harmony would become the hallmark of the high Classic style that these composers created.

The first movement begins with a theme full of grace and charm and yet slyly ambiguous. With a G major key signature of a single sharp (F-sharp), Mozart introduces two chromatic tones (A-sharp and F natural) by the end of the first four-bar phrase. These chromatic tones create just enough harmonic ambiguity to shift the focus almost immediately away from G major to the subdominant of C major. The second four bars unwind the ambiguity as Mozart eases the music back to G major. These subtle harmonic colorings can be heard throughout the concerto and lend to it at times an almost romantic tone. Another example is the surprising deceptive resolution of the second theme in the orchestral exposition not to E minor but the flatted sixth of E-flat major. Mozart seems to know it's all a joke by emphasizing it with forte (loud) dynamics that emphasize the foray into an unexpected key.

The solo writing for piano alternates between simple beauty and virtuosic fingerwork. The technical filler material, featuring scales and arpeggios between sections, takes on more significance than it would in a concerto from an earlier period. Mozart uses these transitional passages to explore a range of expressive harmonic sequences.

The second movement, a kind of nocturne, is an exquisite moment, full of what Michael Steinberg describes as "millions of shadows." The movement begins with an extended section for the orchestra alone. A simple 5-bar theme in C major moves quickly to a cadence on G. The first time, it's just a hint of what might come, for Mozart immediately returns to C major. When the piano enters with the same five bars about a minute into the movement, it heads off in another direction, going directly from a G major cadence into G minor. Later, the piano uses the G major cadence to pivot to E-flat major, a relationship already introduced in the first movement. For Mozart, the harmonic possibilities are almost endless. He uses chromaticism to its fullest extent during the movement, even wandering as far away from C major to the very remote key G-sharp major. Again, throughout this movement, note the continuing emphasis on the wind instruments. The orchestration is beautiful.

The finale is one of the most effervescent movements Mozart ever composed. The opening theme is a catchy folk-like tune. After writing this concerto, Mozart purchased a pet starling, adding it to the menagerie he kept. He taught the bird the opening phrase of this movement, even copying it down in a notebook with the incorrect pitches as the starling sang it.

The finale is a theme with five variations, a somewhat unusual approach to the last movement. The piano enters with the first variation, a straightforward ornamented version of the theme. With each subsequent variation, Mozart creates the illusion of speeding up by embellishing the theme with increasingly shorter note values. In the fourth variation, we enter a world of shadows with a soft and highly chromatic variation in G minor. Mozart brings us back to G major in the fifth variation that emphasizes the orchestra. After this, classical tradition would call for a slow ornamental variation, but instead, Mozart turns the tables and gives us a presto finale that rumbles to a joyful conclusion. At this moment, we can view the future and hear the Mozart that would compose the operatic endings to Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Magic Flute. The pianist leads the way. A cast of wind players takes on independent voices in a texture that sometimes accompanies and reacts with increasingly complex counterpoint. Mozart brushes aside glimpses of harmonic shadows, and the theme is heard one final time, almost in laughter.

 

Don Reinhold © 2003, rev. 2021

WSU SOM 2
Piano Concerto No. 17
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

Born on January 27, 1756, in Salzburg.
Died on December 5, 1791, in Vienna.

Piano Concerto No. 17 in G Major, K. 453

I.   Allegro (11:30’)
II.  Andante (10:30’)
III. Allegretto. Finale: Presto (8’)

Last performed by the Wichita Symphony on January 11 and 12, 1992. Santiago Rodriguez, piano; Gustav Meier, conductor.

 

For newcomers to classical music, the repertoire can seem confusing with works of similar titles differentiated by sequential numbers. Even more confusing are the catalog assignments like Mozart's Köchel ('K'), Bach's BWV (Bach Werke-Verzeichnis) numbers, or the generic "Opus" that may or may not correspond to the chronological order of the works. We talk about Haydn's one-hundred-and-four symphonies, Mozart's forty-one, and Beethoven's nine. Occasionally, some instrumental pieces gain titles, such as Mozart's "Jupiter" Symphony and Beethoven's "Pastoral" Symphony or Haydn's "London" Symphonies. These titles are rarely ascribed to the composer but often to publishers seeking monetary profits. Nicknamed works often influence a work's popularity with the public.

When we speak about concertos, the numbers often become more manageable with Beethoven's five for piano, two for piano by composers such as Chopin, Mendelssohn, Liszt, and Brahms. And then there are twenty-seven piano concertos by Mozart, which collectively mark one of the crowning achievements of classical music.

All too often, as is the case here in Wichita, audiences hear primarily Mozart's Piano Concertos numbered between twenty and twenty-seven. Pianists tend to favor these as examples of Mozart's "mature" style. We don't have the opportunity as often to hear those written just a year or two earlier. This concert is an opportunity to experience one of the exquisite and brilliant concertos numbered under twenty.

Piano concertos became Mozart's principal vehicle for showcasing his talents before the public after his move to Vienna from Salzburg in 1781. Beginning with the Concerto no. 11 (K.413), between 1782 and 1786, Mozart composed fifteen piano concertos.

The winter of 1784 found Mozart at the peak of his popularity as a pianist and composer. Mozart found considerable demands on his time in preparation for the busy Lenten season of concerts, during which theaters were generally more available due to the hiatus of resident companies. He scheduled about two dozen concerts, and for many of them, Mozart needed to produce new music. Realizing the pressure, he wrote in February, "At this time, I have to write works that bring in money."

Between February 9 and April 12, we know that he completed four piano concertos (K.449, K.450, K.451, and K.453) and the Quintet for Piano and Winds, K.452, which he described as one of the "best I have written." He would compose five piano concertos altogether in 1784. In addition to composing and performing, he was in demand as a teacher. Writing to his father on March 3, Mozart summed up his existence: "Pupils consume my entire morning, almost every evening I perform," and "of necessity, I must play new things." In Mozart's day, concertgoers considered "good" music to be new music. There was little interest in the music of the past.

How he managed to accomplish everything is a tribute to his diligence and discipline. He woke early, usually by 6 a.m., to begin composing by 7. By 10 a.m., he would make the rounds of his students until lunch, which was generally sometime between 1 and 3 p.m. In the evening, he would perform, most often in private salons of Vienna's highest courts and palaces. Returning home late, he usually composed for another hour or two before retiring by 1 a.m. It had to be exhausting, and Mozart confessed as much in a letter stating that he had "become tired of late from playing so much, but no small credit to me, my listeners never tired. I have so much to compose, and not a minute must be lost." This schedule often required him to work simultaneously on several compositions at once. Despite his fatigue, he kept at his work.

All of the efforts paid off. According to a chart in Maynard Solomon's biography of Mozart, 1784 was Mozart's most profitable year earning approximately 3720 florins. Modern-day researchers established that this would be roughly the equivalent of $40,000 - $50,000 in today's dollars, an amount suitable to earn Mozart and his family an upper-middle-class Viennese lifestyle. Solomon estimates that Mozart earned 3000 florins from his performances, most of them at private salon engagements and the rest principally from teaching.

Mozart completed the G Major Concerto by April 10, 1784, the date he entered it in his new catalogue of compositions that he had begun on February 9 and maintained up until five days before his death in 1791. The work is dedicated to his 18-year-old student Barbara Ployer, to whom he had earlier dedicated another concerto, K.449, that Mozart completed in February 1784. [The concertos are sometimes referred to as the First and Second Ployer, but the nicknames don’t have the memorable cachet of Beethoven’s “Emperor Concerto” or Mozart’s “Coronation” Concerto, No. 26, K. 537]. We know that Ployer performed the concerto on June 13 at her family's country home in Döbling. Mozart conducted the orchestra hired for the occasion. In addition, Mozart performed the Quintet for Piano and Winds and the Sonata for Two Pianos, K. 448, the latter with Ployer. The concert had particular significance for Mozart, who wanted to show off before his guest, the acclaimed Italian composer Giovanni Paisiello, recently arrived in Vienna.

With the three concertos composed during the winter of 1784, Mozart begins to move towards a distinct and mature style in which he seeks to meld the virtuosity of the concerto form with the structure and emotional impact of the symphony. Some aspects of Johann Christian Bach's galant style of concerto remain evident. The string writing principally serves as an accompaniment. Fuller writing occurs in the orchestral ritornello, those longer sections of the piece before the piano's entrance and between its prominent solos. The steady eighth-note bass serving a rhythmic and harmonic function remains from an earlier style.

The keyboard part contains many virtuosic elements. Most of these lie in the figurations for the right hand. The left hand serves primarily to complete the harmony as chords but occasionally indulges in scales or arpeggiated harmonies across both hands. Some mid-18th century conventions remain, most notably in the rapid left-hand passages that an intermediate piano student would recognize as Alberti bass, named for the Italian composer Domenico Alberti (1710-1740), who used copious amounts of the pattern in his keyboard music. As Mozart wrote, these concertos "are bound to make the performer perspire."

In the earlier concerto (K.449) written for Miss Ployer just a few months earlier, Mozart had indicated that it could be performed "a Quattro," that is, with just a string quartet accompaniment and no winds. That was not the case with the G Major Concerto, K. 453. In the wind parts, Mozart seems intent on resolving some orchestral problems in the interaction between soloist and orchestra. It is easy to see why he might have had winds on his mind while working on this concerto concurrently with the Quintet.

The winds scored for a single flute, two oboes, and two bassoons make up the characteristic color of the concerto. It is here that the true genius of Mozart becomes evident. Throughout the concerto, the winds and piano interact like characters in an opera. The wind writing is much more advanced than that for the strings and demonstrates the lessons of counterpoint that Mozart had been working through concurrently while writing his set of string quartets dedicated to Haydn. The "other" Bach, Johann Sebastian, and Handel begin to influence the writing for the winds. Mozart had become familiar with these composers through a circle of men who gathered at Baron Gottfried van Swieten's home to study the music of the earlier generation. How Haydn and Mozart, and eventually Beethoven, would resolve the issues of counterpoint with classical harmony would become the hallmark of the high Classic style that these composers created.

The first movement begins with a theme full of grace and charm and yet slyly ambiguous. With a G major key signature of a single sharp (F-sharp), Mozart introduces two chromatic tones (A-sharp and F natural) by the end of the first four-bar phrase. These chromatic tones create just enough harmonic ambiguity to shift the focus almost immediately away from G major to the subdominant of C major. The second four bars unwind the ambiguity as Mozart eases the music back to G major. These subtle harmonic colorings can be heard throughout the concerto and lend to it at times an almost romantic tone. Another example is the surprising deceptive resolution of the second theme in the orchestral exposition not to E minor but the flatted sixth of E-flat major. Mozart seems to know it's all a joke by emphasizing it with forte (loud) dynamics that emphasize the foray into an unexpected key.

The solo writing for piano alternates between simple beauty and virtuosic fingerwork. The technical filler material, featuring scales and arpeggios between sections, takes on more significance than it would in a concerto from an earlier period. Mozart uses these transitional passages to explore a range of expressive harmonic sequences.

The second movement, a kind of nocturne, is an exquisite moment, full of what Michael Steinberg describes as "millions of shadows." The movement begins with an extended section for the orchestra alone. A simple 5-bar theme in C major moves quickly to a cadence on G. The first time, it's just a hint of what might come, for Mozart immediately returns to C major. When the piano enters with the same five bars about a minute into the movement, it heads off in another direction, going directly from a G major cadence into G minor. Later, the piano uses the G major cadence to pivot to E-flat major, a relationship already introduced in the first movement. For Mozart, the harmonic possibilities are almost endless. He uses chromaticism to its fullest extent during the movement, even wandering as far away from C major to the very remote key G-sharp major. Again, throughout this movement, note the continuing emphasis on the wind instruments. The orchestration is beautiful.

The finale is one of the most effervescent movements Mozart ever composed. The opening theme is a catchy folk-like tune. After writing this concerto, Mozart purchased a pet starling, adding it to the menagerie he kept. He taught the bird the opening phrase of this movement, even copying it down in a notebook with the incorrect pitches as the starling sang it.

The finale is a theme with five variations, a somewhat unusual approach to the last movement. The piano enters with the first variation, a straightforward ornamented version of the theme. With each subsequent variation, Mozart creates the illusion of speeding up by embellishing the theme with increasingly shorter note values. In the fourth variation, we enter a world of shadows with a soft and highly chromatic variation in G minor. Mozart brings us back to G major in the fifth variation that emphasizes the orchestra. After this, classical tradition would call for a slow ornamental variation, but instead, Mozart turns the tables and gives us a presto finale that rumbles to a joyful conclusion. At this moment, we can view the future and hear the Mozart that would compose the operatic endings to Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Magic Flute. The pianist leads the way. A cast of wind players takes on independent voices in a texture that sometimes accompanies and reacts with increasingly complex counterpoint. Mozart brushes aside glimpses of harmonic shadows, and the theme is heard one final time, almost in laughter.

 

Don Reinhold © 2003, rev. 2021

WSU SOM 2