27th Piano Concerto (Mozart)

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The 27th Piano Concerto in B flat major KV 595 is the last piano concerto by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart . According to a different count, in which only the pure and completely Mozart piano concertos are taken into account, it is the 21st concert.

Emergence

Mozart began to write down the concerto in particell form as early as 1788 , but then left it for three years. He finished it on January 5, 1791 and entered it in his handwritten catalog raisonné. It was performed for the first time on March 4, 1791 at an academy run by the clarinet virtuoso Johann Joseph Beer in the concert hall of the court trainer Ignaz Jahn in Himmelpfortgasse. Mozart himself played the solo part. Letters from the winter of 1788/89 to his friend and box brother Michael Puchberg, in which he asks for money, prove his financial hardship at that time. As a soloist, he was hardly in demand in the last years of his life, this concert was his last public appearance of this kind.

music

1st movement: Allegro

The main movement begins with a lyrical theme, which is unusual for the first movements in Mozart's piano concertos. The swaying accompaniment of the low strings is briefly interrupted by interjections in unison . After 16 bars, the second theme follows unusually quickly. A similar third theme follows, as Mozart had already written in a few previous concerts. The orchestral exposition is rounded off by a long post with a detailed and lyrical internal coda . The solo piano then begins, without its own entrance , with the varied first theme. The transition to the second theme turns to Moll and brings new themes. The execution of this sentence is remarkable; No Mozart's concert movement involves so many and sometimes unusual modulations in such a small space. The development that begins in F major has already reached B minor after nine bars and then touches C major, C minor, E flat major, E flat minor, C flat major, A flat major, F minor, G Minor. With sequencing and enharmonic mix-ups , B flat major is finally reached. This is followed by a recapitulation that conforms to the rules . In the aftermath there is a distinctive entry of the bassoon , followed by a harmonic turn that points to Chopin . The extensive solo cadenza processes the main theme with virtuosity. The movement ends in the mezzopiano .

2nd movement: Larghetto

The song-like movement of the Larghetto anticipates the sound world of the Magic Flute . The melody of the solo piano is recorded in constant interplay by the orchestra. A minor twist leads to a climax from which the piano develops a new simple song melody in a second part of the movement. As in the first movement, there is a strongly modulating part that leads to the third part of the movement, essentially a repetition of the first part. Some motifs are significantly expanded; the dramatic climax is most strikingly taken up and expanded. Here the piano also takes on the motif of the orchestra. The coda follows directly and ends the movement with a few simple final turns, which are played together by the solo piano and orchestra.

3rd movement: Rondo, Allegro

Shortly afterwards, Mozart used the refrain theme of the final rondo for the spring song Sehnsucht nach dem Frühling ( Come, dear May, and do ) . The dance-like 6/8 time melody essentially represents the thematic material which Mozart uses sparingly here. In this rondo, too, the refrain consists of two themes. The second, which resembles the character of the first, is also introduced by the piano shortly afterwards. The transition to the first couplet contains a dummy topic, which, however, belongs to the main topic. It turns the dance melody briefly to the minor key and ends with a virtuoso entrance from the solo piano. Again, Mozart combines rondo form with sonata form .

Instead of a second couplets follows an implementation , the rapidly from a virtuous input is interrupted. This is followed by the repetition of the refrain, from which a new transition leads to the repetition of the couplet. A special feature of the movement is the unusual position of the solo cadenza , after which almost a quarter of the entire finale follows; it is virtuoso and spacious. This is followed by the last repetition of the chorus and an unusually long coda . A vigorous unison run by the orchestra ends the concert with some optimistic chords.

Status

The 27th Piano Concerto is in some respects the most mature work of Mozart of this genre. In terms of its instrumentation, it is one of the piano concertos orchestrated by chamber music, similar to the 14th Concerto KV 449 . Formally, the concerto rather refers to early works before the 13th piano concerto . The variety of topics is limited and the solo part is far less virtuoso and embellished than in some of the previous works, and Mozart is reluctant to introduce structural innovations. Nevertheless, this work also contains peculiarities and innovations that prove that Mozart was looking for new design possibilities right up to the end. Thus, unusually, after the solo cadenza in the first movement , the piano reports in detail. The implementation of the main movement is characterized by an unprecedented density of modulations and an ingenious processing of the topic. In the third movement Mozart combines lyrical cantability with the rondo form and economical thematic means. This work also has a similar overall artistic concept as, for example, in the 20th Piano Concerto KV 466 ; so the first movement already contains the material of the second subject of the middle movement. This is a concept that points to the future and that Beethoven continues to perfect. Mozart's own solo cadenzas have survived for the head and final movements.

The particular maturity and exceptional position of the work, however, is of a content nature. A melancholy trait lies over the work, although it is mostly notated in major. A floating metric contributes to this impression, as do the predominantly lyrical themes such as the main theme of the first movement. It takes up the final rondo and is the melody of the song Sehnsucht nach dem Frühling composed a few days after the piano concerto . With this theme, the whole work points strongly to the future epoch of Romanticism .

literature

  • Hansjürgen Schaefer : Concert book orchestral music G – O. VEB German publishing house for music, Leipzig 1978.
  • Harenberg concert guide. Harenberg Kommunikation, Dortmund 1998, ISBN 3-611-00535-5 .
  • Marius Flothuis: Mozart's Piano Concertos. CH Beck Wissen, Munich 1998.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Heimat.de (PDF)