Mozart, Piano Concerto No 2, K. 39

The salon, a meeting place for sophisticated social circles in Paris, played an important role in the cultural life of the 18th century. People talked there about literature, painting, music, poetry. Also about decoration, "good dress", and "good taste". By the middle of the century, good taste, or good tone, had imposed the tradition of inviting people to tea "English style". A sort of cocktail of our days, but at an earlier hour. It was accompanied by succulent dishes, which were consumed while listening to a group of musicians invited for the occasion.

At the Palais du Temple
The painting by Ollivier that heads this article illustrates the scene. Accompanied by his full court, the Prince de Conti celebrates an "English tea" in the four mirrors hall of the Palais du Temple, in Paris. On the left, as part of the group of musicians, a child is seated at the harpsichord... is Mozart. The painter is paying homage to the visit of the Mozart children to Paris in 1763. Wolfgang was then seven years old.

The pastiche
In Mozart's time, it was a widespread custom to give a "public" concert with fragments of various works. Gradually it also became a healthy custom (as widespread as it was) to compose one's own work by taking pieces from different authors. It was called "pasticcio", as it resembled the so-called operas, constructed with different arias to suit the abilities of different singers. Mozart was no stranger to pastiche, at least in his first four concertos. But that was the way of composing. Whether it was good or bad was another matter.

Piano Concerto No. 2 in B flat major
Along with three others (K 37, K 40-41), Mozart would have composed it at the age of eleven, back in Salzburg after the extensive family tour for more than three years through Europe.
The vast majority of scholars attribute it to Mozart, although it is important to note that the manuscript is almost entirely in the handwriting of Leopold, the father. However, all agree that the piano part may have been improvised by Wolfgang and committed to paper by Leopold.

Movements:
The materials Mozart used to construct the concerto for piano and orchestra come from sonatas attributed to a pair of German virtuosi whom Mozart admired, and whose work he may have encountered in Paris.

00:00   Allegro spiritoso
05:12   Andante staccato
11:05   Molto allegro

The performance (audio only) is by the excellent American pianist Murray Perahia, accompanied by the English Chamber Orchestra.

Chopin, Prelude Opus 28 No 6

When Chopin traveled from Paris to Majorca in 1838 in the company of George Sand and her children, he had finished only two preludes of the 26 he was going to compose. But the remaining ones were sketched out. He had worked on them for long periods, in 1836 and 1837, and his intention was to finish them there, in the peace and quiet offered by the "island of calm", as it was then called. We know that the Mallorca winter proved to be not very calm and that the stay was not entirely pleasant, but Frédérick still managed to finish his preludes.

Its fabulous construction ("I travel through strange spaces" wrote Chopin) was witnessed by Georges Sand:

"... In those moments he composed the most beautiful of those brief pages that he modestly called preludes. They are masterpieces. Several of them bring to mind [...] funeral songs.... Others are melancholy and soft [...] Others bear a mournful sadness and at the same time they enrapture the ear, they tear the heart."

Camille Pleyel, his friend and publisher in Paris, was handed the finished preludes in January 1839. For all of them, Chopin asked for four thousand francs, the approximate equivalent of about three months of teaching. Dedicated to Pleyel, the French edition appeared in September of that year. Shortly thereafter, they were published in Germany and England.

Prelude No. 6 in B minor

Unabashedly steeped in "a mournful sadness", the brief piece of fewer than two minutes length claims from the left hand the steady sustaining of an unremarked lament, a chant, an elegiac melody, while the right hand plucks simple chords with regularity.

The prelude was played for Chopin's funeral (also No. 4) by the organist of the Madeleine church. We have no doubt of the emotion that must have gripped the souls present on that October 30, 1849, at the last farewell to this other magnificent but complicated soul that Chopin was.

The rendition is by South Korean pianist Chi Ho Han, at the 2015 International Chopin Competition in Warsaw.