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Rating: Who invented the piano concerto?
Reading here and there, it seems that musicologists' opinions are not exactly unanimous.
Among the most credited ancestors are Bach's Harpsichord Concertos, themselves heralded by the Fifth Brandenburg Concerto, with its extraordinary "solo" in which the grandparent of the piano magically liberates itself for a few minutes from the prison of strings in which baroque music had always confined it. It would be a noble origin, as well as yet another proof that music owes Bach as much as a religion owes its founder, as Roman Vlad says. Be that as it may, the subsequent evolution of this fascinating genre is largely due to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who at the end of the '700 laid the foundations for a remarkable blossoming of piano concertos which would continue throughout the following century.
The numbers are also notable: 27 concertos over a very short life, and even more impressive is the constant quality that coexists with this abundance, but this is normal for Mozart. The style, however, gradually changes: the early concertos are simple, brilliant, and carefree, with elegant 18th-century embellishments, while the later ones are complex, restless, and profound, filled with disturbances that foreshadow Romanticism. The "music for countesses" of some youthful works, delightful and formally perfect, yet somewhat insubstantial, is forgotten forever. The former child prodigy who amazed Europe with his ability has transformed into an adult and serious composer, and the beauty is that from all this Mozart would derive more disadvantages than anything else because the dictatorship of ephemeral fashions has always existed, and even at the end of the '700, those who proposed something beyond the current taste risked finding empty theaters. To play his last concerto, the delicate K 595 (No. 27), in public once, Mozart had to warm up the stage for the concert of a (by then) famous clarinetist, a certain Beer, just as lesser bands today introduce more famous rockstars. But this was already in 1791, the last year of his life.
In 1785, however, even in the fickle and fashionable Vienna, there was a large number of people interested in his music, which was a valid incentive to produce concertos in quick succession, as only a monster who wrote music at the speed at which normal people write notes could afford to do. From that year is an extraordinary trio of concertos, as beautiful as they are different from each other: K 466 in D minor (No. 20), and K 482 in E-flat major (No. 22) are the two present in an excellent Decca record, played with the usual impeccable and very clean touch by the great Vladimir Ashkenazy, who on this occasion conducts, from the piano, the excellent Philharmonia Orchestra of London. They seem to be put together in the same record to demonstrate how the same artist in the same year can speak two almost foreign languages to each other.
From the very beginning, the Concerto K 466 in D minor promises dark and at times diabolical suggestions: its language, and even the key, unusual for Mozart, are the same as the Requiem and the unsettling finale of Don Giovanni. The first movement ("Allegro") opens with threatening surges of the orchestra, which the piano tries in vain to oppose with a somewhat more singable theme, but terribly sad, and this kind of struggle continues with various and imaginative developments in ever-increasing tension until the orchestra falls silent to make room for a swirling "cadenza" (which more or less equates to a solo) of notes at the discretion of the soloist, even though by now almost everyone uses those, wonderful, expressly written by one of the first pianists who played this concerto, a certain Ludwig Van Beethoven, who would soon make a name for himself. Anyone hoping to relax with the subsequent "Romance" should not be deceived: the name is inviting and the beginning is an idyllic chat between the piano and the winds, of chamber finesse, but suddenly the enchantment is broken by a deadly hail of notes, a powerful and dramatic central "bridge" that only gradually finishes calming down, with the return to the delicate initial interweaving. The last movement, "Allegro assai" starts in a pyrotechnic manner, unleashing a tremendous energy and continues with dizzying evolutions of the piano and orchestra, only glimpsing a glimmer of serenity in the final bars. The Concerto K 466, besides being my favorite among Mozart's, is a "unicum" in its genre, conceived a few decades ahead of its time.
The Concerto K 482 is much more conventional, in the majestic key of E-flat major, quite common in Mozart's works. Beautiful, but with a more harmonious, luminous beauty that exalts itself in the vigorous bursts of trumpets and timpani of the opening "Allegro," alternating with a great variety of singable motifs. However, the preromantic restlessness is also lurking here, concentrated in the central "Andante," where an already melancholic theme is the basis for a series of progressively more intense variations, which just before the end manage to draw some tears. Here too, one appreciates Mozart's mastery in creating exquisite dialogues between the piano and the winds. The finale ("Allegro - Andantino cantabile - Tempo primo") is actually composed of two movements: a lively and serene Allegro that incorporates more or less halfway a delightful lento (the Andantino cantabile) to then resume with the previous energy and conclude in glory this other masterpiece, much less known and played than the first.
A single record for two different, almost estranged Mozart, united only by an inhuman perfection, naturally in the good sense.
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