ProStudioMasters.com

Vienna 1785: Wolfgang Amadeus would compose in his workroom and music seemed to flow from his pen. Soon he would write the opera Le Nozze di Figaro in these same quarters. He had just put the finishing touches on a new piano concerto: festive C Major, luxurious scoring including trumpets and timpani (K467). It was premièred on 12 March 1785 during one of the so-called “academy” concerts. Leopold, the father, was present and could hardly curb his enthusiasm: “The concerto was sensational, the orchestra first-rate”, he wrote to his daughter. He was also impressed by the music’s sheer technical difficulty: “Here, the pianist truly has something to keep his hands moving: one has to concede that this new concerto is surprisingly difficult”. However, this is not a work where Mozart lay particular emphasis on virtuoso aplomb; rather, the C-Major- Concerto draws its energy from “cheerful, open-hearted joy”, as Lars Vogt puts it, “at least in the outer movements. The middle movement, the well-known Andante, seems to contain a vision of paradise – this is an absolutely moving piece of music, provided one manages to create the illusion that it emerges out of nothingness”. Here, once more, we have the ingenious “Mozart Effect”: a beauty plain and simple, without ever descending into vulgarity. … When he was working on the first movement cadenza, his daughter – then four years old – was attempting to conquer the piano keys. A short little melody emerged from her first attempts, “and I incorporated it into my cadenza, concealing it at one point in the left-hand part”.