Composer: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Performer: Academy of Ancient Music, Robert Levin, Ya-Fei Chuang, Bojan Čičić, Laurence Cummings
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: AAM Records
Catalogue: AAM043
Release: 2023
Size: 1.89 GB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: yes
Concerto for Three Pianos & Orchestra, K242
01. I. Allegro
02. II. Adagio
03. III. Rondo. Tempo di minuetto
04. Concerto for piano and violin in D, K315 f
Concerto for 2 Pianos and Orchestra No. 10 in E flat, K365
05. I. Allegro
06. II. Andante
07. III. Rondo. Allegro
Academy of Ancient Music (AAM) continues an acclaimed project to record Mozart’s complete works for keyboard and orchestra, with this eleventh volume of the series. Renowned pianists Robert Levin and Ya-Fei Chuang join Laurence Cummings and AAM to present Mozart’s Concertos Nos. 7 and 10, the former of which is recorded here in Mozart’s own arrangement for two pianos. Also included is the Concerto Movement for Piano, Violin, and Orchestra, completed by Robert Levin. The hardback CD package is accompanied by comprehensive notes commissioned specially for the album.
This is volume 11 of a Mozart piano concerto series instigated in the 1990s by the then-conductor of the Academy of Ancient Music, Christopher Hogwood. The series foundered due to lack of funds but was revived during the COVID-19 pandemic. The massive booklet, well worth the money for physical album buyers, tells the whole story and includes essays on the performers here, the immediate history of these Mozart works, one on the later history of the concerto for multiple instruments, and even one on artist Paul Klee’s interest in music (a little tribute to Hogwood), and more. The central figure is pianist Robert Levin, a Mozart specialist whose ways with the composer are nothing if not controversial. Those who have heard Levin before will not be unaware of what they are getting into here. He injects a substantial element of improvisation in the form of ornamentation and genuinely improvised cadenzas, presumably as Mozart would have done. Levin even disregards Mozart’s explicit instructions in the Concerto for two pianos in F major, K. 242; he uses just one piano for a continuo part where Mozart specifies both. Listeners must decide for themselves what they think of all this, but no one can accuse Levin of supplying a superfluous new version of Mozart nor of being boring in the least. There is also a new piece, an unfinished Concerto movement for piano, violin, and orchestra, K. Anh. 56, in a completion by Levin. In the F major concerto (played in its rarer reworked two-piano version by Mozart, rather than in the original for three pianos), and in the Piano Concerto No. 10 in E flat major, K. 365, Levin is joined by pianist Ya-Fei Chuang, to whom he is married; violinist Bojan Čičić appears in the unfinished concerto, and the conductor of the Academy of Ancient Music is Laurence Cummings. The music is played on historical instruments at A = 430 Hz, just slightly flatter than modern concert pitch. One looks forward to seeing what innovations are coming in Mozart’s later concertos. This album landed on classical best-seller lists in the autumn of 2023.