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PROGRAM NOTES Wolfgang Mozart – Piano Concerto No. 18 in B-Flat

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PROGRAM NOTES Wolfgang Mozart – Piano Concerto No. 18 in B-Flat PROGRAM NOTES Wolfgang Mozart – Piano Concerto No. 18 in B-flat Major, K. 456 Wolfgang Mozart Born January 27, 1756, Salzburg, Austria. Died December 5, 1791, Vienna, Austria. Piano Concerto No. 18 in B-flat Major, K. 456 In 1785, Leopold Mozart spent ten weeks in Vienna visiting his son. It is clear from his letters home to Nannerl, Wolfgang’s sister, that he was thrilled by it all, enjoyed being introduced around town as Wolfgang’s father, and felt relief, mingled with surprise, to see that his son had made a success of it without him. Leopold arrived on February 11, just in time for a bitter cold snap that lasted till the first of March, leaving the streets piled with snow and several people dead of frostbite. Leopold soon saw that his son’s life in Vienna was a whirlwind of public appearances. “Since my arrival,” he later wrote to Nannerl, “your brother’s fortepiano has been taken at least a dozen times from the house to the theater or to some other house.” The night Leopold arrived, Friday the eleventh, he heard Wolfgang play the great D minor piano concerto for the first time; the next evening he listened to Wolfgang’s three new string quartets, and with even greater delight to the famous remark Joseph Haydn made that night: “Before God, and as an honest man, I tell you that your son is the greatest composer known to me in person or by name.” And this was only Saturday. On Sunday, February 13, Wolfgang played “a masterful concerto that he wrote for Paradis. I had the great pleasure of hearing all the interplay of the instruments so clearly that for sheer delight tears came to my eyes. When your brother left the stage, the emperor tipped his hat and called out ‘Bravo Mozart!’ and when he came on to play, there was a great deal of clapping.” That concerto was apparently this work in B-flat major, the one Mozart had entered in his new catalog on September 30, 1784, and Ludwig Köchel would later reckon as number 456 in the composer’s output. Maria Theresia von Paradis was a pianist, composer, and singer who had been blind from early childhood. In 1784, when Mozart composed the concerto for her, she was twenty-five, three years younger than Mozart. That year was the busiest of Mozart’s hectic life, a flurry of productivity that prompted Mozart finally to open a blank book and begin a detailed registry of his works or else lose track forever. In the span of this one year Mozart wrote six of his most magnificent piano concertos. The first and the fourth were written for his pupil Barbara Ployer, and two were for his own concerts—“They are both concertos to make you sweat,” he told his father. The fifth in the series is this lovely B-flat concerto for Maria Theresia, the blind virtuoso whose name is a fair description of the music contained within. Like its neighbors (K. 451, 453, and 459), the concerto opens with rhythmic martial music, though there are no trumpets and drums in the orchestra. It is a forceful opening, and this is strong material, but the rest of the first movement proceeds more like chamber music, animated by the interplay of instruments that so touched Leopold and a piano solo that is more discreet and conversational than flamboyant. The simultaneous clarity and intricacy of the wind writing is especially remarkable. The slow movement is more intimate still, and darker in tone. It is a theme with five variations and a hefty coda instead of a sixth. (Each of the variations is repeated; since Mozart writes out the repeat each time from variation 2 onward, varying the material in slight but significant ways, there are in effect nine distinct variations.) This is minor-key music, frequently enlivened by the shift to major—just the opposite of the first movement. The finale is quick and lively, with hunting horn fanfares, and, among an abundance of surprises, a passage in the remote key of B minor with the winds in 2/4 and the strings in 6/8. The piano enters the dispute, argues briefly and persuasively for 2/4, then sides with the strings and sweeps everyone along to a cheerful 6/8 finale. Phillip Huscher is the program annotator for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. © by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. All rights reserved. Program notes may not be reproduced; brief excerpts may be quoted if due acknowledgment is given to the author and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. These notes appear in galley files and may contain typographical or other errors. Programs and artists subject to change without notice. .
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