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The exceptionally precocious Mozart was presented alongside his older sister Maria
Anna ‘Nannerl' at various European courts from 1762, beginning with much feted
appearances in Munich and Vienna. The following year their father Leopold took the
children as far afield as Paris where they played at the court of Louis XV whilst in
April 1764 they arrived in London and entertained King George III. Whilst in
London Wolfgang played alongside Johann Christian Bach, the most influential
musician in Britain at that time. Both man and boy set each other tasks at
improvisation and it was felt that Mozart consistently bettered the elder player.
Johann Christian Bach held no grudge and the two became firm friends although
they did not meet again until Mozart visited Paris in 1787, at which time Bach was
supervising the first performances of his opera Amadis.
Mozart had already begun to compose when he was five and whilst in London he
composed three symphonies. To give him practice in composing for orchestra,
Leopold set young Wolfgang the task of arranging various piano sonatas by wellknown
and respected composers of the time for solo keyboard and small orchestra.
Mozart's Piano Concerto no. 2 in B flat K39 was composed on the family's return
home to Salzburg from yet another tour and is an arrangement of three movements
by Hermann Friedrich Raupach (1728 - 1778) and Johann Schobert (c1735 - 1767).
It is scored for solo keyboard, two oboes, two horns and strings. Raupach, whose first
and final movements from his Sonata op. 1/1 was used by Mozart in this practice
work, was a fine keyboard player taught by his organist father and spent much of his
working life in St Petersburg as court composer. His opera Alceste, produced the year
in which he became Kapellmeister (1762) was one of the first successful Russian
operas and its sombre style anticipated that of Gluck, whose own version of Alceste
had such an overwhelming effect on Mozart in Vienna in 1767. For a short time
Raupach left Russia and found work in Hamburg and Paris (where he met and heard
Mozart), returning to St Petersburg in 1768. However he failed to achieve the same
success in that city as heretofore and he died there in relative obscurity.
Little is known of Schobart other than that he was in Paris in around 1760 and that
he died in great agony alongside other members of his family having consumed
poisoned mushrooms. From the fact that he managed to publish lavish editions of
his own works at his own expense one assumes that he must have enjoyed some
success; certainly Mozart held his keyboard works in great esteem, using them as
examples of good craftsmanship to his pupils, and he ‘borrowed' a theme of
Schobart's in his Piano Sonata in A minor K 310. For his slow movement Mozart
arranged the Andante poco Allegro section of Schobart's Opus 17/2.
The same musical forces are used for the other two concertos on this disc. In the
winter of 1776/7 a French keyboard virtuoso player named Mlle Jeunehomme visited
Salzburg. She created such a sensation that Mozart named his Piano Concerto no. 9
in E flat K271 after her and he may well have met her once again on his ill-fated tour
to Paris (when his mother died) in 1778. This concerto was composed in the month
of Mozart's twenty first birthday, and the opinion has often been expressed that this
marvellous concerto also marks his musical ‘coming of age'. A number of innovative
effects set this concerto apart from other pieces composed before this time (January
1777): for example an orchestral fanfare brings an immediate response from the
piano - not until Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto would a soloist again enter so
soon. Before the orchestra has finished its customary introduction one hears the
piano trilling on a high B flat before launching into its own theme. The beautifully
melancholic slow movement is in C minor (the first Mozart concerto movement in a
minor key) and its form and character resemble a recitative and aria from an opera
seria. The exhilarating Rondeau finale changes gear suddenly to introduce a minuet
passage with four variations.
The Piano Concerto no.12 in A K 414, composed in 1782, belongs to a group of three
concertos written not long after his arrival in Vienna described by the composer as
‘something intermediate between too difficult and too easy…(being) very brilliant
and falling pleasantly upon the ear'. Mozart offered the scores for sale at the relatively
high price of six ducats (possibly due to the fact that a large debt was about to be
called in) and announced the imminent sale of arrangements for piano solo and
string quartet (thus making it possible for chamber groups and amateurs to play) but
was later forced to cut the price. It must have been particularly galling for the
composer to witness the firm of Artaria making a tidy profit on these concertos when
they were published in 1785. Despite the lack of takings ‘up front',Mozart knew that
he could count on a large and appreciative audience when he performed these pieces
in public - indeed the Emperor Joseph II attended one of these concerts 25 ducats in
advance. Over the next few years Mozart took advantage of the public's new taste for
virtuosity on the concert platform by composing keyboard concertos that were far
more sophisticated than any previously encountered in Vienna or anywhere else. Of
the three concertos in this group (K 413 - 415) this concerto is the most lyrical with
an abundance of interesting material. As a tribute to Johann Christian Bach, who
had died in 1782, Mozart used a theme by his late friend in the Andante movement.
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