Download WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART
Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor, K. 491
Work composed: 1786
World premiere: April 7, 1786, in Vienna; Mozart as soloist
Even when writing a work in a minor key, composers in the Classical period typically ended a
piece happily bathed in the reassuring comfort of the major, as indeed Mozart did in the
otherwise stormy Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor, K. 466. In his Piano Concerto No. 24 in C
minor, K. 491, there is no such compromise; perhaps that is why this work so entranced
Beethoven whose Piano Concerto No. 3, also in C minor, conveys a similar degree of anxiety
and drama. If anything, Mozart’s primary theme in the opening movement is even more
troubling than Beethoven’s, the result of K. 491’s chromaticism and oddly discomfiting 3/4-time
meter. With an orchestral tapestry rich in wind timbres (oboes and clarinets), Mozart’s C-minor
Piano Concerto is his darkest orchestral work. Only in his G-minor String Quintet, K. 516, does
he so readily plumb such depths of feeling — and even there he ends the finale with a sudden
and resolute shift into sunny G major!
Heard in proximity to the G-major Concerto, K. 453 performed before the intermission, the Cminor work seems especially dark, even considering the deep feelings evoked in the previous
work’s Andante. Note that, for instance, the typically light-hearted sounds of the flute turn
ominous in the closing minutes of the opening movement of K. 491.
The opening Allegro begins quietly but menacingly in the orchestra, a broadly spanned main
theme incorporating a series of stark and stabbing chromatic leaps that must have utterly
confounded the sensibilities of his Viennese patrons. When the theme is repeated, it is played at a
louder and more overtly threatening dynamic level. This is the kind of dark and disturbing music
that led early 19th century composers like Schumann and even young Brahms to view Mozart as
one of their own — a Romantic.
The beguiling simplicity of the Larghetto in E-flat major is an appropriate retreat from the
smoldering passion of the opening Allegro. In many of his major-key concertos Mozart invested
his slow movements with emotion, but here the procedure is reversed. The Larghetto is all balm
and euphony.
The finale, a set of variations rather than a customary Rondo, returns to the tragic mood of the
opening movement. The late Abraham Veinus, whose fine study of the concerto from the middle
of the 20th century has stood the passage of time, wrote, “The C-minor is the one Mozart
concerto that has the true epic sweep, the anguished heroism and the rock-like grandeur that one
expects more readily from a Beethoven or a Michelangelo.” Amen.
Program Notes © 2015 Steven Lowe