Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 23 in A major, K. 488
Trading oboes for clarinets and dispensing with the popular trumpet and timpani fixtures of contemporary orchestras, Mozart designed a darker, mellower orchestration that reflects this concerto’s inward, lyrical quality. Indeed, the 23rd concerto is generous and personal, and seems to sing to itself rather than declaiming from a stage as in Mozart’s hallmark operatic style found in so many of the other concerti.
Piano passagework is florid in the Allegro first movement, more cascading and graceful — though no less demanding — than the fiery acrobatics of the other late concerti. The orchestra’s role in the dialogue is involved but never grandiose, and the soloistic wind writing throughout the piece lends an intimacy closer to chamber music than the typical concerto style. Deceptive resolutions, aptly termed for their jarring intrusion of the minor mode when we expect the home key, and a favorite device of Mozart’s for phrase extension, are an important feature of the harmonic fabric here. But in this setting, they lack the impish irony they add to Mozart’s lighter movements as well as the gravitas of his more breathtaking sequences; rather, these gentle subversions of expectations may prompt the listener to lean forward, drawing him closer to this introspective work.
The sparing, poignant Adagio feels especially poetic, made more so by the fact that it is Mozart’s only work in F-sharp minor, and the last minor key slow movement he would write for an instrumental piece. The spirited rondo finale recovers some of the Mozartean zippiness that laid dormant for the first two movements, but is decidedly tempered by the distinctive reservedness of the concerto as a whole.
© Graeme Steele Johnson for the Yale School of Music
Trading oboes for clarinets and dispensing with the popular trumpet and timpani fixtures of contemporary orchestras, Mozart designed a darker, mellower orchestration that reflects this concerto’s inward, lyrical quality. Indeed, the 23rd concerto is generous and personal, and seems to sing to itself rather than declaiming from a stage as in Mozart’s hallmark operatic style found in so many of the other concerti.
Piano passagework is florid in the Allegro first movement, more cascading and graceful — though no less demanding — than the fiery acrobatics of the other late concerti. The orchestra’s role in the dialogue is involved but never grandiose, and the soloistic wind writing throughout the piece lends an intimacy closer to chamber music than the typical concerto style. Deceptive resolutions, aptly termed for their jarring intrusion of the minor mode when we expect the home key, and a favorite device of Mozart’s for phrase extension, are an important feature of the harmonic fabric here. But in this setting, they lack the impish irony they add to Mozart’s lighter movements as well as the gravitas of his more breathtaking sequences; rather, these gentle subversions of expectations may prompt the listener to lean forward, drawing him closer to this introspective work.
The sparing, poignant Adagio feels especially poetic, made more so by the fact that it is Mozart’s only work in F-sharp minor, and the last minor key slow movement he would write for an instrumental piece. The spirited rondo finale recovers some of the Mozartean zippiness that laid dormant for the first two movements, but is decidedly tempered by the distinctive reservedness of the concerto as a whole.
© Graeme Steele Johnson for the Yale School of Music