Thursday, May 16, 2019

Mozart's piano concerto #22 in E-flat K. 482

I've always been a fan of this piece but never really paid enough attention to it to know its name, number, key signature and Köchel listing. But recently I have been looking up performances online.

I collected a bunch of live filmed performances on Youtube.

Milos Forman made good use of the third movement in a sequence in "Amadeus" that shows Mozart traveling to his concert and then performing and conducting the piece outdoors for the Emperor.

Unfortunately the only available clip from the movie is overdubbed but it shows one of my favorite parts of the concerto, right at minute 1:15 of the clip below (which opens with a very young Cynthia Nixon as Mozart's maid.) The orchestra is playing a little heart-beat rhythm as a form of dramatic tension and then the piano comes in. The moment represents a perfect combination of beauty and control that I think defines not only the best art, but the feeling you get when you are in the flow of creating intellectual or artistic work that you have confidence is good. There are few better feelings than that.

And in his genius Mozart pairs that moment of dramatic tension with one at the end. In this clip at minute 33:12 it sounds like the concerto is coming to an end but just before, one more time, there is that little moment of tension and it's even better than the first, with the woodwinds in the background filling out the pulse.

Just amazing.