MOZART: PIANO CONCERTOS Nos. 8 & 26 "CORONATION" - Sidney Foster, Vienna Chamber Orchestra, Helmuth Froschauer

Although twelve years separated the composition of the two concertos presented on this recording, a similar aspect of Mozart's musical personality emerges in each of them. The CONCERTO IN C MAJOR, K. 246, composed in April, 1776, is the work of a young man of twenty. Musically, he was still influenced by the sonatas and concertos of older composers which he had played and studied. Some of these works served as the basis for his earliest concertos -- which were really arrangements of the keyboard sonatas by popular composers of the time. The musical idiom of these older composers -- the generation preceding Mozart's own -- was predominantly the style galant. The Concerto in C major is one of Mozart's earliest concertos not based on themes by other composers. It is, in fact, his fourth original concerto, and was written for Countess Antonia von Lutzow, a pupil of Leopold Mozart's. It was stated above that although they were composed twelve years apart, the Concerto in C major, K. 246, and the Concerto in D major, K. 537 have much in common. The similarities between them are these: There is a great deal of the galant style in the later work; it is tuneful, easy to listen to, and moderately easy to play. There is nothing sad or deeply perceptive about it and it was quite obviously designed as a work to please an audience. The solo-orchestra relationship resembles that of the earlier concerto in that there is hardly any dialogue between them. Mozart appears to have composed the CONCERTO IN D MAJOR, K. 537 in a great hurry, as the entire work contains 906 measures, but the left-hand part has only 452. This presented no problem for his own purposes as the entire work was in his head and he could play what he had composed even if it were not yet committed to paper. The incompleted left-hand part was finished by Johann Andre, the first publisher of the concerto and himself a good composer. It is this version which has come down to us today.