Concerto Eb major for Pianoforte and Orchestra [antikvár]

Mozart's Piano Concerto in E flat Major 1784 Koechel No. 449 More than a year separates the first group of Mozart's Pianoforte Concertos —expressly composed for Vienna—i.e. Koechel Nos. 413, 414 and 415, all three completed by January 1783 (Cf. the preface to my edition of Koechel No. 414, Euienburg pocket scores No. 800)— from their successor: the Concerto in E flat, Koechel No. 449. The date of its completion is known because Mozart starts with it his own Catalogue of works (a little notebook of some forty leaves) which he kept up until shortly before his death. As Alfred Einstein has shown, the first work listed in that handwritten catalogue is "a Concerto for Piano in E flat major (K.449) with accompaniment for strings, oboes and horns ad lib." and the date is February 9, 1784. The Concerto was composed for and dedicated to Mozart's talented piano pupil Barbara (Babette) Ployer (daughter of a fellowcountryman of the Mozarts' from Salzburg) for whom Mozart also wrote the Concerto in G major, Koechel No. 453, completed on April 10, 1784. The Autograph score of K. 449—until quite recently belonging to the Oeffentliche Wissenschaftliche Bibliothek, Berlin—was headed by the following inscription: "Di Wolfgango Mozart per la Signorina Barbara de Ployer, Viena (sic) li 9 di Febbrajo 1784". It consisted of 75 pages on 38 sheets. (Cf. the plate reproducing a page from this temporarily inaccessible autograph.) In the entry in his thematic catalogue as well as in a letter to his father (dated May 15, 1784) Mozart emphasizes that the Concerto may be performed "a quattro" (i.e. with accompaniment of strings only) and that the employment of wind instruments in this score is "ad lib." Such a remark might persuade a superficial reader to associate this Concerto stylistically with its predecessors Koechel Nos. 413-415 which— according to Mozart's letter to the Paris publisher Sieber (April 26, 1783, cf. the preface to my edition of Koechel No. 414, op. cit. pag. VII/VIIl)—could also be performed "a quattro", i.e. as Piano-Quintets. In fact, however, there is a discrepancy of style noticeable between Koechel 414 and 449 which shows as in a flash the hectic pace of Mozart's development as man and artist. The situation is aptly characterized by A. Einstein who—in his book on Mozart (London, 1946, pag. 300 flf.)—explains Mozart's apparent self-contradiction convincingly: " Mozart dedicated the work to his pupil Barbara Ployer and evidently did not wish to deprive her of the possibility of playing it with a small combination of instruments in a drawing-room. Actually, however, the wind instruments, although they seem sparingly used, can hardly be omitted; and this Concerto is not really a continuation of the type of the Salzburg Concertos and the first three composed in Vienna, but a new beginning—the beginning of a new series of no less than twelve great Concertos, written between February 9, 1784, and December 4, 1786 and constituting the high-point of Mozart's instrumental compositions. . . ." Actually, the music of Koechel No. 449 employs already the expressive language of Mozart's mature operas, coining and refining the characteristic melodic types which were destined to inspire many a glorious page in "Figaro", "Don Giovanni" and "The Magic Flute". It is music of nervous tension, dramatic suddenness, flavoured by contrapuntal ingenuities in the Finale and boasting of a slow middle movement whose lyrical passion is heightened by the use of expressive chromatics and E.E.6062