By the time he was seven years old, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart had toured the European courts playing the piano with the keyboard hidden by a cloth, and before the age of eight he had composed his first symphony. Therefore, when he settled in Vienna in 1781, at the age of 25, he did so with the determination to make a living by cultivating both skills, that of pianist and that of composer, to the highest degree possible. So nothing could have made more sense than to compose his own concertos and conduct them from the piano, accompanied by an orchestra put together and hired for the occasion.
Leopold disagrees...
His father, Leopold, was not in favor of the idea. From Salzburg, he strongly reprimanded him in an epistolary argument in which he argued that his destiny lay in some glamorous European court and not in his turning into a free-lance musician, a concept that, of course, did not exist. The icing on the cake was put by Wolfgang the following year, when, without Leopold's consent, he married Konstance Weber.
The concerto production
By this time, Mozart had composed six piano concertos. And life as a couple only increased his output significantly. In the 1782-83 season, he composed three concertos, which were received enthusiastically by the Viennese public, prompting him to double the stakes with the creation of six more concertos in 1784. The subscription concertos with his own music proved to be an excellent vein, although in the following two years he slackened his pace slightly: he composed only three.
Leopold had to pull back. He was pleasantly surprised. His son was living in Vienna happily married and managing on his own.
These are, by the way, Konstance and Wolfgang's best years: they have a gracious one-year-old baby (i.e., he has survived so far), they live in a posh section of Vienna, they have hired servants, and Wolfgang is looking for an opportunity to confess to Konstance that he is about to purchase a billiard table.
Concerto No. 21 in C major, K. 467
No sooner had Mozart finished Concerto No. 20 in D minor than he set about composing the next concerto, which was to become the most popular of them all. In just four weeks, while teaching and attending to his visiting father, Mozart began and completed the Concerto in C major, premiered at the Burgtheater in Vienna, with Wolfgang at the piano, on March 10, 1785, one day after adding it to his catalog.
The widespread reputation it enjoys today is due, malgré tout, to the inclusion of its second movement, Andante, in the soundtrack that accompanied the romantic story told in the 1967 Swedish film Elvira Madigan. Neil Diamond, for his part, added to the piece's popularity with his 1972 song Song Sung Blue, although he didn't tell anyone about it.
Movements:
The typical three of the classical period: fast - slow - fast.
00 Allegro maestoso
14:23 Andante
20:55 Allegro vivace assai
Maestro Vladimir Ashkenazy at the piano conduces The Philharmonia Orchestra.
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