Mozart Piano Concerto No. 20
Mozart Piano Concerto No. 20 Program Notes
While not technically Mozart’s twentieth (some early works were arrangements of CPE Bach), this was the first piano concerto he composed in a minor key. Its brooding and syncopated opening, building towards dramatic tutti chords, and contrasting tender lyricism, seem to foreshadow some of the emotionalism of the Romantic era several decades later. The concerto was first performed on February 11, 1785, the day after it was composed, in the first concert of Mozart’s self- produced series of Lenten subscription concerts. (For Lent, Court theaters were closed: more audiences, and musicians, were therefore available!) Mozart’s father Leopold arrived in Vienna the day of the concert, and writing to his daughter Nannerl, reported especially favorably on this concerto. Posterity has borne this out: while several of Mozart’s piano concertos are now performed widely, it is No. 20 that was played regularly through the 19th century. One of its greatest champions, Ludwig van Beethoven, went so far as to compose cadenzas for the piece – one of which you will hear today. (Mozart’s were not written down.) Mozart’s produced his concerts in an intriguing Viennese building called the Mehlgrube, which now exists as the luxury Ambassador Hotel. Its guests have included Mark Twain, the Emperor and Empress of Ethiopia, Theodore Roosevelt, Robert Schumann, and Charles Lindbergh (though not all at the same time).Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor, K. 466 is one of only two piano concertos Mozart wrote in a minor key, and it is among the most dramatic and emotionally powerful of all his concertos. It was the first of his concertos to enter the standard repertoire after his death.
Mozart completed the concerto on February 10, 1785, and premiered it the same evening at a concert in Vienna — reportedly the copyists were still finishing the parts as the audience arrived.
A typical performance lasts approximately 30 to 33 minutes.
The brooding, syncopated opening theme in the orchestra immediately signals a new emotional world — darker and more turbulent than most Mozart. The beautiful slow movement provides lyrical relief, and the finale returns to D minor before a surprising last-minute turn to D major brings the concerto to a hopeful close.
Beethoven loved Piano Concerto No. 20 deeply — he performed it regularly and wrote his own cadenzas for it, which are still frequently used today. The concerto's dramatic intensity anticipates the Romantic era and shows why Beethoven felt such a strong connection to it.
