Walter Meyer wrote:

>..., if you like the stormy opening of the Brahms First Piano Concerto
>(and I do too), you might want to give a listen to the first movement of
>the Piano Concerto No. 24 in c minor by M_z_rt, to which I used to think
>the Brahms opening similar.

You are right to point to this work as there are some similarities to
Brahms' first concerto.  I do find it one of the more attractive of the
later Mozart concertos.

But I have reservations too, I'm afraid.  Although all the ingredients
are there to create a brooding work I still find myself utterly emotionaly
unmoved.  I won't labour that point though as it's been discussed before.

Don Satz adds:

>If Bob does decide to look into this, I'd recommend Frantz on Eurodisc to
>get the full effect of the demonic quality.  Finding that disc would likely
>be a chore; I haven't heard of Eurodisc in some time.

Perhaps the problem is the version I'm listening to, Askenazy conducting
the Philharmonia and playing.  I'm sure there must be here than he gets
out.  His is a big band version with modern piano. I'm certain that an HIP
performance would help together with a less poderous approach.

The booklet with this disc makes interesting reading however and I quote
from Jeremy Siepmann:

  "From 1781 onwards, when Mozart left the service of the Archbishop of
   Salzburg to pursue a career as a freelance musician in Vienna, the
   piano concerto played an important role in his efforts to captivate
   his new public.  Many of the works of this period reflect the impact
   of his friendship with Haydn, the most distinguished of his new
   Viennese acquaintances, and Mozart readily took up the challenge of
   winning for the concerto the same degree of structural and emotional
   mastery that Haydn had won for the symphony.  Among Haydn's numerous
   innovations, the ones which most affected Mozart were the expansion
   of the development in sonata structures, the expressive and dramatic
   use of form itself, the enrichment of orchestral textures through
   the judicious use of counterpoint, and the achievement of large-scale
   unity through the organic use of small motivic fragments.  Nowhere
   is Haydn's influence heard to better effect than in the two numerical
   siblings of 1785: the brooding D minor Concerto, K466, with its
   tight-knit thematic concentration, and the dazzling C major, K467,
   whose first movement is based almost entirely on the spare outlines
   of its opening march-like theme.  It is hardly surprising that the
   D minor (the first of Mozart's two concertos in the minor mode) should
   have endeared itself to the nineteenth-century Romantics - not least
   to Beethoven, whose cadenzas for it have become almost as familiar
   as the work itself.  From its very opening bar, with its agitated
   syncopations and its ominous run-up to the keynote, it breathes the
   turbulent air of revolution.  ......"

Very interesting, I'm sure you'll agree.  Maybe Brahms did receive the
spirit of Haydn from Mozart.

Bob Draper
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