Search - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Charles Mackerras, Scottish Chamber Orchestra :: Mozart: Piano Concertos K414 & K453

Mozart Revisited

Erik North | San Gabriel, CA USA | 01/17/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Legendary pianist Alfred Brendel and conductor Sir Charles Mackerras are no strangers to the great works of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. During the 1970s, Brendel recorded Mozart's entire output of twenty-seven piano concertos with Sir Neville Marriner and the Academy of St. Martin In The Fields, a cycle that is still talked about today. Meanwhile, Mackerras has approached Mozart's opera, symphonic, and general orchestral output in a way that utilizes a combination of modern orchestras and scholarly performance practices; he has also done several recordings of Mozart's piano concertos, for Telarc with Irish pianist John O'Conor. And here, he and Brendel have teamed up to explore two works in Mozart's piano concerto output that are not exactly overplayed in concert or over-recorded in the studio, the Piano Concertos Nos. 12 & 17.



Composed, respectively, in late 1782 and the spring of 1784, the 12th and 17th concertos are laid out in the traditional three-movement concerto format that Mozart had established, with two fast outer movements bisected by a quiet Andante in the middle of each work. The 12th, in A Major, is one of Mozart's lightest and, strangely, least-played concertos of this kind, while the 17th, in G Major, gives us a hint of the grandeur that would be a hallmark of his last eight piano concertos (nos. 20-27), minus the marital nature of some of those concertos' opening movements.



Both works are given stellar renditions by Brendel, on what would incredibly appear to be his second go-around in the Mozart piano concerto arena, while Mackerras and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, an impressive conductor/orchestra combination when it comes to Mozart, provide able support. Well worth looking for, especially for Mozart lovers."