Mozart’s progress from child prodigy to mature brilliance, from innocent insight to inspired innovation, is measured out in his piano music. Somm’s survey of six works for one, two and three pianos brilliantly charts both his phenomenal development and his far-reaching transformation of the concerto form.
Two of today’s finest, most accomplished and admired pianists – Valerie Tryon and Peter Donohoe – bring unrivalled experience to bear in impeccable, incisive and illuminating accounts of the solo and duo works. The young, fast-rising Mishka Rushdie Momen joins them for the discretely dazzling Piano Concerto No.7 (K242) for three pianos.
The release comes shortly after Valerie Tryon received the Order of Canada, the country’s highest civilian award, in recognition of her remarkable international career and dedicated contribution to education.
Three other concertos are featured. Composed for Mozart’s sister, Nannerl, the two-piano No.10 (K365) is a playful but challenging exercise in sibling rivalry. A favourite of Beethoven’s, No.20 (K466) is marked by a dark-hued drama and broiling emotional turbulence banished by its surprise sunny ending. Famously, it prompted Haydn to tell Mozart’s father, “Your son is the greatest composer whom I know in person or by reputation”.
The Piano Concerto No.21 (K467) is distinguished by its melodic directness, guileless wit and the balletic interaction between piano and orchestra, its meltingly lyrical Andante popularised by its use in the 1967 film Elvira Madigan and American pop star Neil Diamond’s 1972 chart hit, Song Sung Blue. Echoing the galant style of the Seventh Piano Concerto, the ebullient, lyrical and bright Sonata for Two Pianos in D (K448) pulls and pushes the focus between the two instruments in music of delightfully genial resourcefulness.
Composed a year later, the Fantasia in C minor (K396) for solo piano boasts a cornucopia of mesmerising effects as it spins the piano line into altogether idiomatic flights of dark-toned fantasy richly realised by Valerie Tryon.
On This Recording
- Piano Concerto No.20 in D minor, K466 - I. Allegro
- II. Romance
- III. Allegro assai
- Piano Concerto No.21 in C, K467 - I. Allegro maestoso
- II. Andante
- III. Allegro vivace assai
- Fantasia in C minor, K396 - Adagio
- Piano Concerto No.10 in E flat for Two Pianos, K365 - I. Allegro
- II. Andante
- Allegro
- Sonata for Two Pianos in D, K448 - Allegro con spirito
- II. Andante
- III. Allegro molto
- Piano Concerto No.7 in F for Three Pianos, K242 - Allegro
- II. Adagio
- III. Rondeau - Tempo di Menuetto