NOSPR / Simone Young / Elena Bashkirowa - NOSPR

The first performance of Mozart’s latest Piano Concerto No. 20 took place on the 11th of February 1785 in Vienna’s Haus zur Mehlgrube. In the manuscript of his next concerto, in C major, the composer put a note: “nel febbraio 1785,” which indicates that he started working on it in the same month. In the catalogue of completed works, it is dated on the 9th of March, which means that it took him less than four weeks to write. One of Mozart’s most “operatic” instrumental pieces, with a wonderfully melodious, dreamy Andante and an expressive dialogue between the piano and the orchestra in Allegro vivace assai, did not become truly popular until the 20th century. Still, Mozart himself must have valued it highly, if he later used one of its motifs in Symphony No. 40. Bruckner could not rival this great classic in spontaneity or faith in his own abilities. He revised his Symphony No. 3, dazzlingly innovative and complex in construction, as many as six times. He did not publish it until 1890, seventeen years after he had completed its first version, rejected by the Vienna Philharmonic as unplayable. Both masterpieces have stood the test of time: the fruit of Mozart’s spontaneous brilliance and the effect of Bruckner’s shy genius.