"FOR ME, BACH AND MOZART continue to stand head and shoulders above the other truly great geniuses of music, and so I naturally came upon Mozart’s keyboard concertos at a very early date,” Nikolaus Harnoncourt replied when asked about the background to the concert enshrined in the present release. “There is something very special about these works because he was both things at once - a creative artist and an interpreter.” Mozart wrote no fewer than thirty concertos for keyboard instruments. The first seven were probably intended for the harpsichord, the remaining twenty-three for the pianoforte. (Of these, K 242 is scored for three or, alternatively, for two keyboards, K 365 for two.) Only later did it emerge that the hrst four - K 37 and 39-41 (1767) - are pasticcios that Mozart compiled on the basis of sonata movements by other composers, while the next three, K 107, are orchestrations of Johann Christian Bach’s Keyboard Sonatas op. 5 nos. 2-4. Performers inevitably prefer to concentrate on the later works, most of which were written in Vienna after 1782, but the earlier concertos have been unjustly neglected as the result of a late Romantic aesthetic fixated on the notion of originality for only when we know these early works can we appreciate the full extent of the incredible advances that Mozart made in the field of the keyboard concerto over a period of just twenty-five years, beginning with a comprehensive retrospective of the genre and ending with an exploration of Romantic worlds of expression that in places anticipates Beethoven and even Schubert and Chopin.
Even as a child Mozart was already an accomplished harpsichordist and pianist. It was on these instruments that he could communicate most directly with his audiences, as the musicologist Martin Geck observed in his 2006 monograph on Mozart: “If a concerto is to be more than just a dialogue between a soloist and a ripieno, in other words, if it is to represent a subtle interaction between two characteristic bodies of sound, this can happen only with a keyboard instrument as a partner, because this instrument alone is capable of full-voiced playing that allows it to function as the orchestra's equal” (348). Mozart played the early concertos in Salzburg and on tour, demonstrating his brilliance as a virtuoso, while the later ones were written for audiences at the subscription concerts that he organized in Vienna from 1782 onwards. These listeners were treated to a breathtaking form of musical discourse and to unprecedented musical innovations to which the composer brought his most personal expressive language. And yet it is clear that Mozart did not unduly tax his listeners with these works, for, as he wrote to tell his father: “These concertos are a happy medium between what is too easy and too difficult; they are very brilliant, pleasing to the ear, and natural, without being vapid. There are passages here and there from which the connoisseurs alone can derive satisfaction; but these passages are written in such a way that the less learned cannot fail to be pleased, though without knowing why.”
The Keyboard Concerto No. 23 in A major K 488 was completed on 2 March 1786, while No. 25 in C major K 503 was finished on 4 December 1786. Mozart played them in public at his concerts on his favourite fortepiano, which he bought in 1782 and which, according to his son Carl, was used at all of Mozart’s concerts, no matter where they took place. This instrument was built by Anton Walter, one of the most prolific instrument makers of his time - he is known to have built more than seven hundred instruments, several of which have survived in their original form, even if few of them are still playable. And there is a further problem, as Nikolaus Harnoncourt explains: “Except for the keys, the keyboard that we describe as such today has practically nothing in common with an instrument by Stein or Walter dating from Mozart’s time. In spite of all the technical differences and other changes in the way they are made, a modern violin or flute or oboe still has a certain amount in common with the instrument that was referred to by that name in Mozart’s day. So I can understand why these names have been retained, and I have been able to give plausible performances of Mozart’s symphonies, operas and sacred works with the instruments in use today. But the situation is completely different with the keyboard: the instrument was so radically altered between 1800 and around 1870 that it became something essentially different and new.”
As a result of a “family accident”, Harnoncourt owns a playable keyboard made by Anton Walter in 1791, the year of Mozart’s death: “In the 1960s we used it in a Radio Bremen recording of all of Mozart’s chamber music for keyboard - initially out of curiosity but later with conviction and enthusiasm. For all of us, it meant discovering an unknown world of sound. The works came to life of their own accord, and everything made sense - it was wonderful! At the same time we were delighted to discover Mozart’s works and their sound world with our Concentus Musicus. But it wasn’t long before the question was being asked: why no keyboard concertos?” For a long time two obstacles seemed insuperable to the conductor: "First, there was the question of the instrument - old keyboards simply sound too old, and the ‘copies’ that were being made at that time didn’t strike me as good enough, certainly no match for the magnificent string instruments of Stainer and the old Italians; and, secondly, there was the question of the performer, for many of the ‘specialists’ who existed at that time were really not great artists, and in the case of Mozart just playing well isn’t enough.”
But then, when he was in Amsterdam working on a Haydn recording, Harnoncourt was introduced to an instrument maker who specialized in high-quality instruments based on historic models: Paul McNulty. The list of owners of his copies of Walter fortepianos and other instruments can be found on his website (www.fortepiano.eu) and reads like a who’s who of leading figures in the field of historically informed performance practice. Now all that was missing was a pianist: ‘A few more years were to pass, during which time members of the Concentus grew increasingly vocal in their demand that we should also perform concertos. I then learnt that Rudolf Buchbinder had for years been playing on early keyboards, just for himself, without an audience. Of course, we had known him for years and I had even performed some Mozart concertos with him - with different orchestras. But it had simply never occurred to me that a man who had clearly come into the world on a keyboard and who was supremely blessed by the Muses... of course! That was it!”
But Buchbinder had long since parted company with his collection of historic pianos, and it required his momentous meeting with Harnoncourt to revive his interest. Recalling that meeting, Buchbinder reports that Harnoncourt had said to him in passing: “You know, Rudi, it’s very funny! It occurs to me that I’ve never played a single Mozart keyboard concerto with the Concentus. You have to do it!’ And his wife Alice then came over and took a scrap of paper out of her pocket: ‘Yes, and these are the dates, Rudi.’” For this special encounter Paul McNulty provided a new keyboard modelled on one by Walter - it had to be suitable for the Großer Musikvereinssaal in Vienna - and so it all finally came together: “At the rehearsals we felt as if we were rediscoverin the world: we had to learn how to listen. And the significance of every passage, even of every figure, proved to be a discovery of a kind that we had never known before,” the conductor recalls. “There were numerous occasions when I had to go down into the hall and listen ‘from outside’ and adjust the very delicate balance. The sound of the keyboard was now fully integrated into the orchestral sound; much of the passage-work that until then had seemed superficial and virtuosic now acquired a fundamentally new meaning within this new and unprecedented context. The concerts were incredible occasions for us and also for our audiences. I’m infinitely grateful for this, and happy that I was privileged to experience it for myself.”