"Piano Concertos Nos.17, 20 : Leif Ove Andsnes / Norwegian Chamber Orchestra"

Mozart: Piano Concertos 17 & 20
Leif Ove Andsnes
Norwegian Chamber Orchestra

For Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 1784 was an annus mirabilis during which he lived in Vienna and made his living as a performer, teacher and composer of, among other works, six concertos including Nos. 17, K.453 and 20, K.466. He wrote K.453 in G Major for Barbara (‘Babette’) von Ployer, a talented student who performed it in a private concert at her family’s home in June 1784. The composer may have performed it himself some weeks earlier at the Kärtnerthor Theatre. The concerto became one of his most popular works in the genre, noted -according to  Richard Wigmore’s booklet text- for its “graceful, pastoral-tinged lyricism, its rhapsodic slow movement and its variation finale based on a catchy tune apparently whistled, with one ‘mistake’ by the composer’s pet starling. The wind writing (for flute, oboes, bassoons and horns) is of unprecedented intricacy, and the interplay between piano, strings and wind reaches a new level of wit and poetry.”

K.466 in D minor is possibly the most famous of Mozart’s piano concertos and, in terms of its depth of expression and intensity of emotion, one of the greatest. The work challenged Mozart’s audiences, not least because it was composed in the minor mode, associated with turbulence or pathos. In sections, the orchestration, with ominous bass rumblings and the reinforcement of trumpets and drums, anticipates scenes from Don Giovanni. The late music critic and editor Eric Blom described Mozart in K.466 as “a romantic before what historians conveniently but loosely label as the romantic period. He even prophetically calls his slow movement a Romanze.” Mozart premiered K.466 in February of 1785.   

Leif Ove performs and records regularly with the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra. In addition to their previous Mozart Piano Concertos disc, they have collaborated in a disc of Haydn Concertos, which won a Gramophone Award in 2000, and a DVD of works by Mozart and Bach in 2005. They will perform Mozart’s Piano Concertos Nos. 14 K.449 and 23 K.488 on tour in Norway and Spain in February 2008.

Concerto in G for Piano and Orchestra No. 17, K453
1 Allegro 11:34
2 Andante 9:19
3 Allegretto 7:80

Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor, K. 466
4 Allegro 14:00
5 Romanze 8:19
6 Rondo (Allegro assai) 7:27

Leif Ove Andsnes
Norwegian Chamber Orchestra