Mozart Concerto 20

Music Minus One Piano

W.A. MOZARTPiano Concerto No. 21

in C major, KV467“Elvira Madigan”

W.A. MOZART

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wE HAVE TRIED to create a product that will provide you an easy way to learn and perform a concerto with a full orchestra in the comfort of your own home. Because it involves a fixed orchestral performance, there is an inherent lack of flexibility in tempo and cadenza length. The following MMO features and techniques will reduce these inflexibilities and help you maxi-mize the effectiveness of the MMO practice and performance system:

Where the soloist begins a movement solo, we have provided an introductory measure with subtle taps inserted at the actual tempo before the soloist’s entrance.

Chapter stops on your CD are conve-niently located throughout the piece at the beginnings of practice sections, and are cross-referenced in the score. This should help you quickly find a desired place in the music as you learn the piece.

Chapter stops have also been placed at orchestra entrances (after cadenzas, for example) so that, with the help of a second person, it is possible to perform a seamless version of the concerto along-side your MMO CD accompaniment. While we have allotted what is generally con-sidered an average amount of time for a cadenza, each performer will have a dif-ferent interpretation and observe individ-

ual tempi. Your personal rendition may preclude a perfect “fit” within the space provided. Therefore, by having a second person press the pause;button on your CD player after the start of each cadenza, followed by the next track:button, your CD will be cued to the orchestra’s re-entry. When you as soloist are at the end of the cadenza or other solo passage, the second person can press the play4(or pause;button) on the CD remote to allow a synchronized orchestra re-entry.

Regarding tempi: again, we have ob-served generally accepted tempi, but some may wish to perform at a different tempo, or to slow down or speed up the accompa-niment for practice purposes. You can pur-chase from (or from other audio and electronics dealers) specialized CD players which allow variable speed while main-taining proper pitch. This is an indispens-able tool for the serious musician and you may wish to look into purchasing this useful piece of equipment for full enjoy-ment of all your MMO editions.

We want to provide you with the most useful practice and performance accom-paniments possible. If you have any sug-gestions for improving the MMO system, please feel free to contact us. You can reach us by e-mail at [email protected].

SUGGESTIONS FOR USING THIS MMO EDITION

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WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

CONCERTOIN C MAJOR

FOR PIANO AND ORCHESTRA

KV467

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MUSIC MINUS ONE

COMPLETE MINUS VERSION PIANO TRACK TRACK SECTION PAGE

1 cm I. (Allegro maestoso).......................................................................... 7 2 cn Oboe intro to measure 69 .............................................................. 9 co Measure 80: Orchestra re-entry ................................................... 10 3 cp Measure 107: Tutti ..................................................................... 12 cq Measure 122: Orchestra re-entry ................................................. 12 4 cr Measure 136: Tutti ..................................................................... 13 cs Measure 177: Orchestra re-entry ................................................. 16 5 ct Measure 194: Orchestra re-entry ................................................. 18 dk Measure 231: Orchestra re-entry ................................................. 19 dl Measure 266: Orchestra re-entry ................................................. 22 6 dm Measure 274............................................................................... 23 7 dn Measure 321............................................................................... 26 8 do Measure 351............................................................................... 28 dp Measure 365: Orchestra re-entry ................................................. 29 9 dq Measure 384: Orchestra re-entry ................................................. 30 bk After measure 396: Begin cadenza................................................ 31 dr Measure 397: End Cadenza: Orchestra re-entry............................ 34

bl ds II. Andante...................................................................................... 35 bm dt Measure 22................................................................................. 35 bn ek Measure 55................................................................................. 38 bo el Measure 82................................................................................. 41

bp em III. Allegro vivace assai...................................................................... 43 en Measure 22: Orchestra re-entry after optional eingang/cadenza...... 43 bq Measure 28: Tutti ....................................................................... 43 br eo Measure 74, second division of the downbeat, at orchestra re-entry 45 bs ep Measure 110: orchestra re-entry .................................................. 46 eq Measure 162: Orchestra re-entry ................................................. 48 er Measure 179: Orchestra re-entry after optional cadenza ................ 48 bt es Measure 186: Tutti ..................................................................... 49 et Measure 263: Orchestra re-entry................................................. 51 ck fk Measure 309............................................................................... 53 cl After Bar 425: Begin cadenza....................................................... 57 fl Measure 426: End cadenza.......................................................... 59


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MOZART’S PIANO CONCERTO IN C MAJOR, KV467‘ELVIRA MADIGAN’

A measure of confusion hovers over the com-position dates for Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21 in C Major, KV467. While Mozart

has been criticized for not keeping a cleaner and more accurate catalogue of his works, one is tempted to say, rather, that it is all the more remarkable he came as close as he did in keeping his catalogue even remotely systematized. After all, his output was overwhelming and his composition-speed phenom-enal. And, besides—what if Mozart had indeed kept a better, thoroughly accurate catalogue? How then would the legion of Mozartian scholars these past two centuries have spent their time and earned their income?

The autograph manuscript of KV467, which resides in the Morgan Library in New York, is dated “nel Febraio 1785” (“in February 1785”), while in his catalogue Mozart had entered 9 March 1785. This confusion can be easily settled if we assume the February 1785 date refers to the month Mozart began the composition while 9 March was the exact date of completion. Since this latter date happened to be the day before the work’s initial performance, on 10 March 1785, we can also assume Mozart worked under the gun composing the concerto up to the very last moment.

Which is all to say that Mozart must have com-posed this masterpiece of the piano concerto form in a short span of about twenty-seven days. This came right after the completion of his previous mas-terwork, the Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor, KV466, on 10 February. The almost total lack of revisions in the autograph score of KV467 illustrates for us what books and lectures about Mozart can only hollowly scratch at—that this composer’s bril-liance was of the most profound order. To realize

that this magnificent concerto could have poured forth from any human with such little apparent effort is to understand the meaning of true genius.

We must not for a moment assume that this bus-iest of composers had sequestered himself during the four weeks of the work’s composition. Far from it. Mozart taught pupils on a daily basis during this period; endured a long, draining visit from his unusually demanding father, Leopold; held a quar-tet-party to play through with his father and with Franz Josef Haydn some of Mozart’s new quartets dedicated to that Classical master; participated in at least a dozen private and public concerts; and had to play his usual rôle of husband and breadwinner. With this schedule it is no wonder Mozart found so little time for revising his works. What is more remarkable is that he found the time to compose any-thing at all.

But compose Mozart did, as was demanded by the desperate need to pay his eternally mounting debts. Leopold reported that his son took in 559 gulden for the concerto, a sum that must have seemed good enough to the composer at the time, though it reeks of absurdity now.

A handbill announcing the première of KV467 on 10 March 1785 states that Mozart was to play the work himself, which would explain why once again there are no surviving cadenzas by the composer himself, as he certainly would have improvised them during his performance.

The handbill also states that the concerto was to be played on an “especially large Forte piano pedale.” This interesting instrument had been cus-tom-built by Mozart for his Viennese concerts, and he used it to reinforce the lower notes in his piano concerti and in improvising fantasias. It was essen-

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tially a legless fortepiano that lay on the floor under-neath his usual piano. He played it with the feet by means of a pedal-board, very much like an organ is played. Since Mozart was a skilled organist, playing such an odd instrument must have come easily to him.

Mozart set KV467 in the ceremonial key of C major, which certainly helps to make this one of the composer’s brightest pieces of music. Even in its slow, much more reflective second movement, there is an atmosphere of radiant sunshine, charmingly dappled, which shines forth beautifully. And like its immediate predecessor, the dark D-minor Piano Concerto, KV466, it displays a much more sym-phonic character than his previous piano concerti.

The first movement is lacking a tempo in the auto-graph, though it is generally accepted as an Allegro maestoso. It’s in this movement that we can fleetingly find one of the concerto’s rare somber moments; this is during the piano solo at measure 91, when a G-minor theme is introduced. This is a theme which closely resembles the first theme of the composer’s Symphony No. 40 in G minor, which the composer came to write three years later. Mozart often used this G-minor key to signify epic tragedy, which was not at all the aura of KV467. This explains why the G-minor theme is not heard again in the concerto, as it is quickly banished by a series of piano runs that lead to the happier and more appropriate key of G major.

Unquestionably one of the most romantic move-ments in any piano concerto composed by Mozart—or by any other composer, for that matter—is the second movement of KV467, the dreamlike Andante. Here, Mozart masterfully merges marked dissonances and

muted strings with a fluid melody, sung aria-like over continuous triplets and pizzicato strings, creating a deceptively simple, magical sound which hangs suspended in the heavens. This Andante has for many years been identified with the 1967 Swedish film Elvira Madigan, which drew its theme from this movement. Now, ironically, this decreasingly esteemed film is known mainly from its utilization of this wonderful piece of music.

Here, in this Andante, Mozart is exposed on the brink of the forthcoming period in art, Romanticism, in which personal expression becomes paramount, and in which Classicism’s emphasis on symmetry and balance became superceded by a much looser form. In this Andante’s extraordinary slowness, Mozart single-handedly appears to be breaking with music’s past and present, and to be looking forward to an entirely new sensibility.

The concerto’s third movement is an energetic rondo that returns us to the more traditional Mozartian world. This finale has a lively uphill-downhill main theme dressed in ceremonial pomp eventually followed by an exhilarating central episode that surprises us by focusing on the first six notes of the main theme. In the end Mozart customarily returns home to C major, in which the charming theme that opens the movement ends it as well.

Although KV467 is considered by some to be among Mozart’s most demanding concerti for the pianist, that is often not the reaction from even moderately skilled pianists. For this concerto, in its limpid beauty and form, possesses that good-natured, inspiring quality that can effortlessly sweep any player along from beginning to end.

—Douglas Scharmann


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PREFACE TO THE 1886 BISCHOFF EDITION†

The principal source for this edition of the C-major Concerto was the autograph of the score, belong-ing to Conductor-in-Chief W. Taubert. Besides

the above, I collated the old Breitkopf & Härtel edition of the parts, an early André engraved edition of the piano-part, Richault’s score-edition, the score-edition published by André* in 1855, the new Breitkopf & Härtel edition of the score (Series XVI, 21), and other modern editions.

The autograph is dated “Febraio 1785.” Although it contains many passages which are “written over,” the text is, with few exceptions, nowhere doubtful. Some disputed points are discussed in the Notes. The following peculiari-ties in the autograph have not been adhered to in the pres-ent edition:

(1) As staccato-marks we find in part dashes, in part dots. But it does not appear to have been the composer’s intention to indicate different degrees of abbreviation.

(2) The short appoggiaturas, counting among them those which, in the livelier movements, admit of an exe-cution as sixteenth-notes, are written as small sixteenth-notes, or (more rarely) as thirty-second notes. There is no apparent reason for making a distinction between the two. The relatively long appoggiaturas in the Andante are given in our text, in conformity with the autograph, as eighth-notes.

(3) In the Tutti the direction “col Basso” is almost invariably given in the cembalo-part. As this direction has become meaningless in our day, there had to be made, at the closes of some of the Soli, certain slight alterations, giving to both right hand and left a quarter-note for the last chord; whereas Mozart had written an eighth-note for the connection with the orchestral bass. It should be observed that early editions do not always notice the places where the direction “col Basso” is intentionally omitted.

Below are quoted a series of earlier readings, which

later made way for the versions contained in our text:

I. (Allegro maestoso)[Measures 91-95]‡. Originally, the second half of each

measure in the bass read like the first half, which gave rise to various bad readings of the parts.

[Measure 104]. Figure in the bass:

[Measure 183]. Earlier form:

[Measures 188-189]. Originally, both hands played in octaves, thus:

The accompaniment by the string-quartet, requiring a change in the passage, appears to have been added later.

[Measure 254]. The last beat read, originally:

that is, g2 instead of f 2. Corresponding deviations 2 and 4 measures further on. Correction finally indistinct.

[Measure 325]. At first written in both staves an octave higher.

[Measures 357-358]. Originally, the left hand played unisono with the bassoon-parts.

II. Andante[Measures 12] et seq. In the Andante the accompanying

parts were frequently refined by later corrections. From the 12th measure onward the bass originally read:

III. Allegro vivace assai[Measures 105 & 107]. At first the viola-part read:

Later, in consideration of the e2 in the piano-part, the half note g2 was substituted. Here the score-editions are at fault.

[Measure 293-294]. The bass figure was written at first an octave higher.

All heavily engraved slurs, dots and expression-marks are found in the autograph. The editor’s additions are dis-tinguishable by lighter (or smaller) engraving.

To Messrs. Conductor-in-Chief Taubert, Royal Librarian Dr. Kop-fermann, and Dr. Erich Prieger, special thanks are due for so kindly fur-nishing material for the revision of the text.

—Dr. Hans BischoffBerlin, 1886.

†[This MMO edition utilizes the 1886 Bischoff edition as its source; Mozart left no cadenzas, and we reproduce this edition’s standard cadenzas by Danish composer and pianist August Winding (1835-1899). However, the soloist chose to use Lipatti’s cadenza for the third movement, and we have included that version in the Appendix on p. 61.]*Wherever André is quoted, without special qualification, the score-edition is meant.‡[Bischoff originally referred to pages from another edition; we have substituted the proper measure numbers in italics and brackets for easy reference.]


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CONCERTOIN C MAJOR

FOR PIANO AND ORCHESTRA

‘ELVIRA MADIGAN’

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

KV467Y1cm


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*Soloist uses cadenza by Lipatti (see Appendix

p.61)


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APPENDIX

CADENZATO THE 3RD MOVEMENT

BY LIPATTI

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