With all their variety of form and content, Mozart’s piano concertos keep throughout certain features which never change. They all have three movements: the first always begins with an orchestral prelude; the second is nearly always an andante; the third generally a rondo.In the classical concerto, as in the symphony, the first allegro is the chief movement, the one which sets the mark upon the work, and on it one is tempted to found one’s judgement of the concerto as a whole.

In the first movement, the orchestral prelude serves as the first exposition and contains the main subjects of the movement. For Mozart’s concertos, the entry of the solo piano starts a new development of the theme, usually longer and in the dominant key (the key in the title of the work). The soloist’s appearance ends always by leading back to the first subject, generally given out by the orchestra. The development of the theme is followed by the recapitulation, thus dividing the first movement of the concerto into three basic parts.

The piano’s appearance settles the character of the composition. However brilliant the orchestral part, the interest shifts and the orchestra henceforward takes a second place. The soloist forges ahead alone through scales and arpeggios, showing off skill and personality in a way akin to a jazz soloist (though with a bit more formal structure). From these bravura passages, grow by degrees melodic ideas, subsidiary subjects already heard or new ones. In his concertos, Mozart gives the solo instrument a theme of its own, personal and prominent, that distinguishes it from other themes played by the orchestra. He enhances the piano part by entrusting it with the expression of something all its own. One musicologist writes that in the D minor Mozart speaks here, in the development, in threatening tones which grip the soul like the forebodings of disaster.

This is the Mozart piano concerto that Beethoven admired above all others. It’s the only one he played in public (and the only one for which he wrote cadenzas). Throughout the nineteenth century, it was the sole concerto by Mozart that was regularly performed—its demonic power and dark beauty spoke to musicians who had been raised on Beethoven, Chopin, and Liszt. When it was fashionable to dismiss Mozart as an outdated composer with fussy manners and empty charm, this score brought people to their senses. It’s surely one of the most celebrated pieces ever written—“almost as much myth as work of art,” as Charles Rosen put it.

Mozart and Beethoven met for the first time in 1787, two years after this concerto was premiered in Vienna. Beethoven wanted to study with Mozart—he may even have had a few lessons with him at the time. But it wasn’t until 1792, the year after Mozart’s death, that Beethoven settled in Vienna, and so he ended up studying with Haydn instead, finding little comfort—or truth—in Count Waldstein’s famous prophecy that he would “receive Mozart’s spirit from Haydn’s hands.” As a favor to Mozart’s widow Constanze, and as tribute to the composer he most admired, Beethoven played Mozart’s D minor concerto between the acts of La clemenza di Tito at a memorial performance on March 31, 1795, no doubt improvising that night the famous cadenza that he later wrote down. (Mozart’s own cadenzas haven’t survived, although they are mentioned in one of his father’s letters) It’s the only time Beethoven is known to have played one of Mozart’s concertos in public, although he was certainly well acquainted with others and particularly liked the one in C minor.

It’s easy to understand what attracted Beethoven—as well as later nineteenth-century musicians—to this concerto. It belongs to a handful of works by Mozart that suggested he was the earliest great romantic composer. This is his first concerto in a minor key—in itself an unusual, forward-looking choice. Like the terrifying chords that open Don Giovanni and return when Don Juan is dragged down to hell, or the Lacrimosa from the Requiem (the last music Mozart wrote), the concerto established D minor as the darkest of keys and seemed at first almost to exhaust its tragic potential. The music surges with frenzy of a soul driven on by irresistible passion leading to a closing subject of peace — a peace of desolation, almost of despair.

The opening, with its syncopated, throbbing D minor chords, is not about theme or harmony so much as gesture and tension. Like much truly dramatic music, it’s ominously quiet. The piano’s appearance gives us the feeling, not of an instrument added to many others, but of a personality substituting itself for the anonymous orchestral mass. The piano, surprisingly, doesn’t repeat this music when it enters, but begins with its own highly individual phrases—in fact, the soloist traverses the entire movement without once playing these signature chords. In the same way, the piano’s opening lines—as pure and unadorned as recitative—are not imitated by the orchestra. The relationship between soloist and orchestra had never before been so tense or complex. (When Haydn turned pages at a performance some time after Mozart’s death, Leopold Mozart boasted that this allowed him to appreciate “the artful composition and interweaving, as well as the difficulty of the concerto.”) Their uneasy interplay—sometimes accommodating, occasionally unyielding—is what carries this music into the realm of high drama. This is the first concerto with which Mozart so openly reveals not only the form’s symphonic qualities, but its affinity with the world of opera as well.

The piano alone begins the second movement, a serene romance that brings relief without completely banishing the tragic mood. In particular, an explosive G minor interlude—“the noisy part with the fast triplets,” as Leopold called it—recalls the unrest that came before—and will soon return. When Leopold Mozart arrived in Vienna on February 10, 1785, the day before the premiere of his son’s new D minor concerto, he noted that there was no time to rehearse the finale, since the parts were still being copied. (“Your brother did not even have time to play through the Rondo,” he wrote home to Nannerl, “as he had to supervise the copying.”) The music shows no sign of haste, however. Charles Rosen even argues that this is the first concerto with outer movements
“so strikingly and openly related.” Mozart’s care and wisdom are evident everywhere. Once again, it’s the unaccompanied piano that launches the argument, this time with unusual urgency. This isn’t a conventionally cheerful rondo, but a highly charged, forceful conclusion to a tragic work. (In its darkness and power, it anticipates the minor-key finale of Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto.) Finally, just as the chilling D minor of Don Giovanni ends in the brilliance of D major, so too this
drama, in a radiant coda that is the equivalent of the tidy happy ending the eighteenth-century opera stage demanded.

At the end of Milos Forman’s 1984 film Amadeus, composer Antonio Salieri, played by F.
Murray Abraham, finishes recounting his story to a hapless priest in an insane asylum. Salieri
tells the priest, “I will speak for you. I speak for all mediocrities; I am their champion. I am their
patron saint.” As Salieri is wheeled through the halls, he blesses his fellow inmates:
“Mediocrities everywhere, I absolve you.” In the background, growing steadily louder is the
sublime opening of the Romance, music so exquisitely perfect that it emphasizes, with knife-like
precision, the vast gulf separating Mozart’s genius from Salieri’s mundane competence.
The Romance’s soothing respite is torn to shreds by the piano’s furious introduction to the
Allegro assai. This movement, in the form of a rondo (a repeating theme separated by
contrasting short sections), simultaneously elevates the soloist’s role with a dizzying series of
runs, and reinforces the tempestuous, unsettled nature of the music. The counter-theme, with its
flippant nyah-nyah-nyah ornaments, suggests a sardonic, even vindictive, state of mind; these
are not emotions we usually associate with Mozart’s music. It is no wonder, then, that 19th
century composers, particularly Beethoven, venerated this concerto as a harbinger of the
personal, expressive style that characterizes the Romantic era.

Adapted from Phillip Huscher, the program annotator for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.