Piano Concerto No. 24 (Mozart)
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The Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor, K. 491 is a concertante work for piano, or pianoforte, and orchestra by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Mozart composed the concerto in the winter of 1785–1786 and completed the work on 24 March 1786. The premiere was on 7 April 1786 at the Burgtheater, Vienna.[1]
The concerto has the following three movements:
- Allegro in C minor
- Larghetto in E-flat major
- Allegretto (Variations) in C minor
It is scored for flute, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, horns, trumpets, timpani and strings. Of the Mozart piano concertos, this one has the most complete scoring. It is the only one scored for both oboes and clarinets. It is also the only late Mozart piano concerto in which the soloist plays after the cadenza in the first movement, here adorning an orchestral argument based on the extremely chromatic opening theme of the work with arpeggios, all the way through to the quiet close. The whole performance lasts roughly 30 minutes.
Long considered to be one of Mozart's greatest works, Arthur Hutchings has described it to be the most "concerted" of all the concertos (i.e. the most integrated). Girdlestone has also effectively claimed it as the greatest. Ludwig van Beethoven took particular inspiration for his own music from this concerto.[2]
The work has obvious musical antecedents in Joseph Haydn's Symphony No. 78, also in C minor and from which the Concerto's opening statement is drawn. Jonathan Stock has analysed in detail Mozart's use of woodwind timbre in the instrumentation of the concerto's slow movement.[3] Chris Goertzen has mapped the structure of the slow movement.[4]
The concerto was first published in parts in 1800. The manuscript of the concerto resided in the 1960's at the Royal College of Music.[5]
[edit] References
- ^ Maunder, Richard (February 1989). "Correspondence: Performing Mozart and Beethoven Concertos". Early Music 17 (1): 139–140.
- ^ Kinderman, William (1996). "Reviews of Books: Beethoven Forum, ii (ed. by Christopher Reynolds, with Lewis Lockwood and James Webster)". Music & Letters 77 (1): 124–126.
- ^ Stock, Jonathan P.J. (May 1997). "Orchestration as Structural Determinant: Mozart's Deployment of Woodwind Timbre in the Slow Movement of the C Minor Piano Concerto K. 491". Music & Letters 78 (3): 210–219. doi:.
- ^ Goertzen, Chris (1991). "Compromises in Orchestration in Mozart's Coronation Concerto". The Musical Quarterly 75 (2): 148–173. doi:.
- ^ F.W.S. (July 1965). "Reviews of Music: Concerto, K. 491". Music & Letters 46 (3): 285–286.
[edit] Sources
- Girdlestone, C. M. Mozart's Piano Concertos. Cassell, London.
- Hutchings, A. A Companion to Mozart's Piano Concertos, Oxford University Press.
- Mozart, W. A. Piano Concertos Nos. 23-27 in full score. Dover Publications, New York.
- Tovey, D. F. Essays in musical analysis, volume 3, Concertos. Oxford University Press.
[edit] External links
- Konzert für Klavier und Orchester in c KV 491: Score and critical report (German) in the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe
- Piano Concerto No. 24 was available at the International Music Score Library Project.
- BBC Discovering Music (browse for .ram file for this work)
