Mozart's piano concertos span the whole of his creative life and are viewed by many as the highpoint of his instrumental achievement. Their wide diversity of approaches and emphases show Mozart's remarkable fecundity and his ability to match the style of his musical material to the scale of the work, or to the performing means at hand.

Mozart's Concerto in E-flat, K. 482, was one of three concertos intended for a series of Lenten subscription concerts given in Vienna in 1786. While its companion works K. 488 and K. 491 were not completed until March, the E-flat Concerto received its premiere at a concert aiding the pension fund of the Viennese Tonkünstler-Societät on December 23, 1785. The main attraction on this occasion was Dittersdorf's oratorio Esther, and Mozart was relegated to performing his Concerto in the break between the two halves of the oratorio.

The E-flat Concerto stems from a busy creative period. It is contemporaneous with the opera buffa Le nozze di Figaro, and operatic gestures and emotional extremes are absorbed into the instrumental writing, particularly in the slow movement. This E-flat Concerto was the first of Mozart's piano concertos to include the clarinet, and the breadth of the orchestral sonority is further enhanced by the inclusion of trumpets and drums. [...]

The Concerto in D, K. 537, is Mozart's penultimate concerto for piano. He completed it in 1788 and played it in Frankfurt in October 1790, at the time of the coronation festivities for Leopold II. The manuscript seems to have been written out somewhat in haste, and the left-hand piano part is largely missing, probably because the composer himself was to be the soloist. In addition, the woodwinds, trumpets and drums were not conceived as an integral part of the work but were an "ad libitum" augmentation. The version of the concerto known today is that of the first edition, published in 1794 by Johann André, who was also responsible for the epithet "Coronation."

The D Major Concerto displays a musical straightforwardness that is set in relief by complexity of its immediate predecessors, the six masterworks written between 1785 and 1786. Its limpid grace and untroubled clarity, while not deeply moving, are nevertheless highly polished and musically convincing. The concerto is conceived on a grand scale, the dramatic gestures of the previous several concertos being replaced by material that lends itself to brilliant rather than introspective pianistic effects. [...]

Elizabeth A. Wright

The essence of Romanticism in music, which also represents a nucleous of a general Romantic outlook and attitude, the Romantic creative imagination, and the characteristically open style of the Romantic narrative and structural form, can be found in these concertos, in particular the more expansive and representational, reveal a certain 'restlessness of heart', a feeling of anxiety and an emotional dynamism inherent to the music of the times; as well as a dualistic manner in which the composers of the Romantic age perceived the music: on the one hand strongly self-sufficient in matters od form and expression, on the other deficient in a purist sense. Consequently 'on a par' with other art forms, the concerto repertory strives to be poetic, picturesque and theatrical; a if yearning to be a narrative discussion, dialogue or a dramatic, lyrical as well as humorous theatrical scene, while simultaneously retainin its character of 'display' virtuosity. Against a background of the numerous lesser works of the concerto genre which formed the staple 'musical diet' of 19th century audiences, a few Piano Concertos stand out as masterpieces, that for the last century and a half have regularly attracted successive generations of performers and have maintained their status, in the concertos by Chopin, the one by Schumann, the two by Liszt, the two by Brahms, the one by Tchaikovsky and to a certain extent the early 20th Century concertos of Rachmaninov. Moreover, Romanticism seen in the concerto repertory emerged from an already rich tradition, namely the concertos of Mozart, and found a suitably fertile soil for propagation in the 'brillante' style of early 19th Century popular music.

The principal characteristic of the Romantic concerto in the full bloom of its stylistic expression, is the creative interpretation of the performance. All Romantic concertos - from Chopin and Schumann to Liszt, Brahms, Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov - are written with a somewhat theatrical intention and the role of the performer in mind. They are composed for outstanding artists and towering personalities capable of breathing life into the music and realising every detail of the vast armony of expression typical of the genre though in keeping, wills the composers intentions, the soloist-pianist, conductor and orchestral musicians are each assigned a part to play that is revealed in the score and detailed in the notation, enabling each to fully enact the musical drama of a concert performance. As pointled observed by Harnoncourt, the notational format of the 19th Century is not only to provide a guide to the structure, scheme and form of a composition, but above all to serve the musician in his performance of the work. Like the script of theatrical play, the score of a Romantic concerto contains a list of characters and instructions. However, one of the paradoxes and dialectic questions of Romantic music is that, the more articulate and detailed the notation in the score of the cocnerto, the more inspired is the creative role of the performer. Perhaps this occurs because the Romantic music of 19th Century is to large extent underpinned by the spirit of improvisation (musical and poetic) which played such a significant role in the culture of the period; and in considering the general perception of music in the Romantic age, two equally prominent tendencies interact and vie with each other. On the one hand - a predilection for structural form and its diversity of stylistic expression, and on the other - a longing for freedom from formal restraint and a yearning for spontaneity. Piano and poetry, the force of music and the power of spoken verse - are two paramount features of Romantic improvisation. ...

Bohdan Pociej

Translated by Anna Kasprzyk

Martha Argerich knows Prokofiev's music much better than the contents of her handbag. She plays his concertos with incredible ease, at any time of the day and in any physical or psychological condition; at dawn or dusk, without having slept or practised for a few weeks. In fact, she calls Prokofiev's Third her "chloroform concerto", although she still gets nervous before performing it.

As I write these lines, Martha Argerich tells me, less than a week before a concert in Rome with Myung-Whun Chung and the Santa Cecilia orchestra, that she is "completely unprepared" for her performance of the Prokofiev Third. She hasn't touched the keyboard for more than a month yet, deep down, she knows that she will pull it off and probably give a superb performance of the concerto. "I really don't know why, but Prokofiev comes easily to me", says the Argentinian pianist, "I understand his sensitivity, his sense of humour". ...

Annie Dutoit, 1998

TCHAIKOVSKY WITHOUT EVENING DRESS

Pogorelich on this recordings

Ivo Pogorelich was a student at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow, so when I asked him when he had first played the Concerto in B flat minor I expected a totally different answer from the one I got. "My teachers told me that my hands were exactly right for the concerto, all my friends played it - but I didn't", he said with a laugh. "I didn't want to. You could hear it being hammered out by every other student; I had an overdose of this music - I'd virtually been brought up on it."

He pondered. "I first heard the B flat minor Concerto on the radio when I was five. At the time I was thrilled by the way the piano sang and swelled with sound. Soon afterwards I heard it at a concert - an overwhelming impression. But then my experiences as a student gradually turned me against the Concerto. All I could hear was a virtuoso piece for up-and-coming pianists, a test of finger dexterity - not art.

At least, when I was 18, I began to study the concerto myself - and to rediscover it.

It certainly isn't the stale, self-satisfied jangle of notes which had so got on my nerves as the practice piece of my fellow students! I had thought that this concerto reduced all pianists to a common denominator, whether they were young or old, Russian or American.

I'd been wrong. It was all those up-and-coming pianists around me who had been reducing the concerto to a common denominator, subjecting Tchaikovsky to the circus act of their interpretation. Now I realized that wasn't what he'd had in mind. It became my purpose to show that Tchaikovsky had written a genuine dialogue between piano and orchestra. What it needs is partnership, not ostentatious cascades of sound with humble orchestral accompaniment. It is true that you have to toil like a gallery slave to master the technical difficulties of the piano part. But it is after that that the real work begins; you have to get into the frame of mind in which Tchaikovsky wrote this work to discover its secrets. Above all the pianist must not seek merely to dazzle, but must allow complete equality to the orchestra; when a theme is taken up by the woodwind, or the lower strings reveal structural features of the music, they must really be audible - the concerto must not be swamped by the flood of sound poured out by the pianist.

I am glad that Claudio Abbado and the orchestra fully shared my view in this matter, and that every instrumentalist gave of his best. Mere routine would be especially dangerous in the case of this work.

On the day before we began recording the concerto we performed in concert, and then we tried to bring the same live quality to our playing in the studio. Only without evening dress."

Hanno Rinke,
Translation: John Coombs

Tchaikovsky

Piano Concerto nr. 1, in B flat major, Op. 23

1. Allegro non troppo e molto maestoso -
Allegro con spirito [23:18]
2. Andante semplice - Prestissimo - Tempo I [7:43]
3. Allegro con fuoco [6:39]


Ivo Pogorelich, piano

London Symphony Orchestra,
Claudio Abbado

When Chopin gave the premiere of his F minor piano concerto—the one known as no. 2, although it was written before the E minor concerto—in the first public concert of his own music in Warsaw, on March 17, 1830, he was immediately acclaimed as a national hero. His first appearance in Paris, on February 26, 1832, again performing this concerto, drew the city's most discriminating musicians—both Liszt and Mendelssohn attended and were full of praise. (...)

Of all the developments in music after Beethoven, none is more unlikely than Chopin's success. Within a decade of Beethoven's death, Chopin made a major international career writing mostly small-scale piano pieces. (Every one of his compositions includes the piano. He is unique among major composers; even Liszt, the other outstanding pianist-composer of the nineteenth century, eventually wrote significant orchestral and choral music.) Chopin never thought of composing a symphony, and only in his two piano concertos did he attempt to write for orchestra in the conventional large forms. And yet his impact on the composers of the day and his influence on the music of the future is incalculable. (...)

Chopin's two piano concertos were composed, unapologetically, as showcases for a traveling virtuoso. Both are youthful works, characterized by piano writing of such imagination and beauty that Chopin's inexperience writing for the orchestra is immaterial. Under the circumstances, it is difficult to explain how these two works, written when he was just nineteen and twenty (first the one in F minor, then the E minor score that is played this evening) reveal such emotional depth and range.

Chopin didn't set out to make something new of standard concerto form; both inexperience and a lifelong disinterest in symphonic thought stood in his way. His models were the recent concertos by Johann Nepomuk Hummel—popular, effective, utterly workmanlike scores that were, themselves, updated knock-offs of Mozart's concertos. For a great innovator, Chopin was a man of surprisingly conservative tastes. The only composers he admired without reservation were Mozart and Bach (before a concert he often would play through The Well-Tempered Clavier). He disliked most contemporary music: he had no use for Berlioz or Liszt, and he once said that Schumann's Carnaval, which includes an affectionate parody of Chopin's style, was not music at all. Although the great painter Delacroix was arguably his best friend, Chopin nonetheless preferred the more traditional work of David and Ingres. ...

When making these transcriptions for guitar, one is therefore presented with an abundance of authentic examples and alternatives, for the guitar itself has both a melodic and harmonic nature and therefore the ability to move freely between all the existing original versions.

Not surprisingly the most difficult choices were in Bach's E major Violin Concerto, and in the Solo Andante. Whenever Bach arranged his solo violin music for keyboard he changed it very deliberately to a "keyboard" conception with far more ornamentation, changed arpeggio figures and generally more complex writing. Inevitably in doing so, some of the melodic simplicity and charm of the original gets lost - I have in mind particularly the Fugue from G minor solo Violin Sonata and Bach's own arrangements for lute and organ. For these reasons I prefer the original E major Violin Concerto to its keyboard companion and have used this original as the model, with borrowings from the harpsichord version where arpeggio patterns are more idiomatic on the guitar, mainly in the first movement. In the wonderful second movement the only problem was the opening sustained G# in the solo instrument - nothing can equal the beauty of that note on the violin, and as the guitar cannot sustain for that long and I don't like the trill Bach gives the harpsichord, it seemed obvious to give it to the organ continuo. The third movement was happily straightforward, having a dance-like character very suited to the guitar.

The solo Violin Sonata in A minor was transcribed by Bach for harpsichord in D minor. I have selected the Andante from this Sonata and adapted it rather freely in the style of an ornamented aria.

The Chaconne was originally a slow Spanish dance in triple time which emphasised and usually began on the second beat of the bar: its eight bars, usually four bars repeated, were the perfect basis for instrumental variation and from the sixteenth century onward composers have been attracted by it simple form and endless possibilities. Bach's great Chaconne in D minor has thirty-one variations which are developed in several continuous sections to create a work of expressive "grandeur", with its central climax in the major key. 2 developments in the variations are particularly interesting; excepting the arpeggio section, most minor key variations from No. 5 onwards are based on the descending "Spanish" harmony D (mi) C, B-flat, A and they begin on the first beat of the bar instead of the second. These changes enhance forward movement and continuity - but did Bach also have in mind the Spanish origin of the Chaconne?

John Williams

Bach

Violin Concerto nr. 2, BWV 1042 *
Aria (Andante from Solo Violin Sonata, BWV 1003) *
Chaconne (from Violin Partita nr. 2, BWV 1004) *
Lute Suite in A minor (orig: G minor), BWV 995
Lute Suite in E minor, BWV 996

* Arrangement for guitar by John Williams

John Williams, guitar

Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields
Kenneth Sillito, conductor


Quality: mp3, varied kbps
Size: 131 MB

Lipatti's playing was hailed as having reached the highest degrees in integrity and pianistic technique — which he employed in the quest for musical perfection.

Lipatti is particularly noted for his interpretations of Frédéric Chopin, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Johann Sebastian Bach, but he also made recordings of Maurice Ravel's Alborada del Gracioso, Franz Liszt, George Enescu, the Schumann Piano Concerto, and Grieg Piano Concerto. His recording of Chopin's Waltzes has remained in print since its release and has long been a favorite of many classical music-lovers.

Lipatti never recorded any music of Beethoven. It is a common misconception, however, that Lipatti did not perform Beethoven's music until late in his career. In fact, Lipatti had performed the Emperor Concerto in Bucharest twice during the 1940-41 season, and even stood ready to record it for EMI in 1949. Thus, an internal memo from Lipatti's recording producer, Walter Legge, dated February 23, 1948 states that "Lipatti ha[d] his heart set on doing a Beethoven Concerto in 1949" and nominates the Emperor Concerto given that Lipatti had already performed it. Similarly, Beethoven's Waldstein Sonata had been a fixture of Lipatti's repertoire since 1935. [...]

The power, beauty and sincerity of his recordings continue to inspire and uplift pianists and music lovers worldwide. In addition to his pianistic accomplishments, Lipatti was a composer, who wrote in a neoclassical style with French and Romanian influences. He was posthumously made a member of the Romanian Academy in 1997. ...

From Wikipedia

Schumann, Mozart

Piano Concertos

Piano Concerto in A minor

Piano Concerto nr. 21, in C

Dinu Lipatti, piano

Philharmonia Orchestra

Orchestre du Festival de Lucerne

Herbert von Karajan, conductor

Quality: mp3, 192 kbps

Size: 80 MB

Beethoven arrived in Vienna in 1792 and at first made his reputation primarily as a piano virtuoso. It was quite natural that within a short time he would turn to the composition of the piano concertos, a genre that had been developed to such a high degree by Mozart. To an ambitious and talented young composer like Beethoven, Mozart's mature concertos offered a wealth of inspiration and models, but also a great burden: how could anyone create something new in a form that had been brought to virtual perfection by the recently deceased master?

Beethoven's response, a balance of respect for tradition and an urge toward innovation, was fully characteristic. In his first three piano concertos, composed in the decade between 1793 and 1803 and all writtn for his own use, he did not abandon the elegant Mozartian forms, but infused them with a new urgency and intensity. The distinguished critic Donald F. Tovey felt that in the process Beethoven had "radically misconceived" the proper role of the opening orchestral tutti by making them too symphonic, too spacious, too full of development and modulations. But it was precisely in this way that Beethoven began to put his own unique stamp on the concerto form. ...

Walter Frisch

Mozart

The Complete Piano Concertos

Disc 8 of 10

Concerto nr. 20, in D minor, K. 466
Concerto nr. 24, in C minor, K. 491

English Chamber Orchestra,
Daniel Barenboim, piano & conductor

DL Mozart Concertos

Quality: mp3, varied kbps
Size: 100 MB

Vienna, 16 February 1785

On Friday evening we drove to his first subscription concert, at wich a great many members of the aristocracy were present. ... The concert was magnificent and the orchestra played splendidly. In addiction to the symphonies a female singer of the Italian theatre sang two arias. Then we had a new and very fine concerto [K. 466] by Wolfgang, wich the copyist was still copying when we arrived, and the rondo os which your brother did not even have time to play through, as he had to supervise the copying. ... On Saturday evening Herr Joseph Haydn and the two Barons Tinti came to see us... Haydn said to me: "Before God and as an honest man I tell you that your son is the greatest composer known to me either in person or by name. He has taste and, what is more, the most profound knowledge of composition."

Mozart

The Complete Piano Concertos

Disc 7 of 10

Concerto nr. 18, in B flat major, K. 456
Concerto nr. 19, in F major, K. 459

English Chamber Orchestra,
Daniel Barenboim, piano & conductor

DL Mozart Concertos

Quality: mp3, varied kbps
Size: 90 MB

Mozart

The Complete Piano Concertos

Disc 6 of 10

Concerto nr. 17, in G major, K. 453
Concerto nr. 26, in D major, K. 537 "Coronation"

English Chamber Orchestra,
Daniel Barenboim, piano & conductor

DL Mozart Concertos

Quality: mp3, varied kbps
Size: 93 MB

Mozart

The Complete Piano Concertos

Disc 5 of 10

Contents:
Concerto nr. 14, in E flat major, K. 449
Concerto nr. 15, in B flat major, K. 450
Concerto nr. 16, in D major, K. 451

English Chamber Orchestra,
Daniel Barenboim, piano & conductor

DL Mozart Concertos

Quality: mp3, 160 kbps
Size: 86 MB

The Complete Piano Concertos

Disc 4 of 10

Contents:
Concerto nr. 11, in F major, K. 413
Concerto nr. 12, in A major, K. 414
Concerto nr. 13, in C major, K. 415

English Chamber Orchestra,
Daniel Barenboim, piano & conductor

DL Mozart Concertos

Quality: mp3, 160 kbps
Size: 87 MB

The Complete Piano Concertos

Disc 3 of 10
Contents:
Concerto nr. 9, in E flat major, k. 271 "Jeunnehomme"
Concerto nr. 25, in C major, K. 503
Concert Rondo nr. 1, in D major, K. 382

English Chamber Orchestra,
Daniel Barenboim, piano & conductor

DL Mozart Concertos
Part 1
Part 2

Quality: mp3, 192 kbps
Size: 49 MB + 54 MB

Mozart

The Complete Piano Concertos

Disc 2 of 10

Contents:
Concerto nr. 5, in D major, K. 175
Concerto nr. 6, in B flat major, K. 238
Concerto nr. 8, in C major, K. 246 "Lützow"

English Chamber Orchestra,
Daniel Barenboim, piano & conductor

DL Mozart Concertos

Quality: mp3, 192 kbps
Size: 95 MB