Mozart was a great man

Chris De Souza unlocks the secrets of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 21 in C major, K467, with
the help of musical examples from pianist Martin Roscoe and the BBC National Orchestra of
Wales under Brad Cohen.

Elvira Madigan, byname of Piano Concerto No. 21 in C Major, K 467,

three-movement concerto for piano and orchestra by Wolfgang Amadeus
Mozart, the best known of his many piano concerti. It was completed on
March 9, 1785. Its wide recognition is in large part due to the Swedish
film Elvira Madigan (1967), in which its lyrical second movement was
featured and from which it derives its byname.
Mozart wrote the first of his many piano concerti at age 11 and the last one
mere months before his death at age 35. This circumstance makes the
piano concerto perfectly suited to the study of the development of Mozart’s
style and demonstrates how the Classical style as a whole came into being.
His earliest piano concerti are close adaptations of Baroque sonatas,
whereas his final few works in the genre hint at the passion and power that
would become popular in the Romantic era.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, portrait by Johann Georg Edlinger; in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin,
Germany.Sean Gallup/Getty Images
 Mozart completed his Concerto No. 21 only a month after his previous
concerto. He would write four more in the next 21 months. Because Mozart
wrote them for his own concert performances in Vienna, he did not write
down the solo cadenzas that he improvised during performance, and, as a
result, modern concert pianists have had to either create their own
cadenzas or use those created by others.
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Piano Concerto No. 21 is among the most technically demanding of all
Mozart’s concerti. The composer’s own father, Leopold Mozart, described it
as “astonishingly difficult.” The difficulty lies less in the intricacy of the notes
on the page than in playing those many notes smoothly and elegantly.
Mozart made the challenge look easy, as newspapers of his time attest,
though his letters reveal the hard work behind those performances.
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The piece’s first movement, “Allegro maestoso,” is an exuberant,
extroverted lead-in to an internal, quietly satisfying second movement,
“Andante.” The third movement, “Allegro vivace assai,” reveals Mozart at
his high-spirited, irrepressible best.

Betsy Schwarm

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