Mozart Piano Concerto No. 23
Mozart Piano Concerto No. 23 Program Notes
In Vienna, Mozart composed about three piano concertos a year, mostly for benefit concerts at palaces, performing for a private, wealthy and fairly discerning audience. At the same time, he was teaching, composing, establishing his young family with Constanze, and in 1786, the year of this concerto, beginning his partnership with librettist Lorenzo da Ponte. This concerto premiered a few months after their opera The Marriage of Figaro, and probably close to the time they began planning Don Giovanni. The key of A major was favored by Mozart, including in his Clarinet Concerto and Quintet, Symphonies 14, 21 and 29, the fifth violin concerto (‘Turkish’) and other works – its sympathetic variations with the open strings of the violins lends it a certain brightness, and the tendencies of its related keys have a wide musical palette. Born: January 27, 1756, Salzburg, Austria Died: December 5, 1791, Vienna, AustriaPiano Concerto No. 23 in A major, K. 488 is one of the most beloved of Mozart's 27 piano concertos, composed in 1786. It is a work of exquisite balance between brilliance and poetry, often described as the most perfectly proportioned of all his concertos.
Mozart composed the concerto in March 1786, and it was almost certainly premiered by Mozart himself at one of his subscription concerts in Vienna that spring.
A typical performance lasts approximately 26 to 29 minutes.
The slow movement in F-sharp minor is one of the most heartbreakingly beautiful things Mozart ever wrote — a slow, processional Adagio of profound sadness and tenderness. The finale is a sparkling Presto that brings the concerto to a joyful close, the melancholy of the slow movement transformed into something radiant.
Mozart composed Piano Concerto No. 23 in the same year as The Marriage of Figaro, one of his greatest operas — evidence of the astonishing productivity of his Viennese years. The concerto uses clarinets in the orchestra rather than oboes, giving it a warmer, more veiled orchestral color than many of his other concertos.
