Piano Concerto No. 15 (Mozart)

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Piano Concerto in B♭ major
No. 15
by
K
. 450
Composed1784 (1784)
MovementsAllegro
Andante
Allegro
Scoring
  • Piano
  • orchestra
1. Allegro
2. Andante
3. Allegro
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The Piano Concerto No. 15 in

KV. 450 is a concertante work for piano and orchestra by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The concerto is scored for solo piano, flute (third movement only), two oboes, two bassoons, two horns, and strings. A brief section of the third movement is played by Mozart in a deleted scene from the movie Amadeus
.

History

Mozart composed the concerto for performance at a series of concerts at the Vienna venues of the Trattnerhof and the Burgtheater in the first quarter of 1784, where he was himself the soloist in March 1784.[1][2]

In a letter to his father, Mozart compared this concerto with the 16th concerto in D:

"I consider them both to be concertos which make one sweat; but the B flat one beats the one in D for difficulty."[3]

Many pianists consider this to be one of the most difficult of Mozart's piano concertos.[4] The concerto is primarily difficult from its many quick scale patterns which must be played perfectly and also from its many fast chord patterns moving up and down. Beginning with this concerto, Mozart began to use the term "grand" to describe his concerto such as K. 450 which feature a prominent and required wind section for the ensemble.[5]

Music

The concerto is in three movements:

  1. Allegro
  2. Andante in E♭ major
  3. Allegro

The first movement is in typical

semiquavers, wide jumps and towards the end a double-handed tremolo
where the soloist 'battles against' the orchestra. This movement is among the most challenging works which Mozart has ever written for the keyboard.

Simon Keefe has noted contemporary comments from Mozart's era on how the woodwind writing in this concerto showed a "newly intricate and sophisticated" character compared to Mozart's prior keyboard concerti.[1] Elaine Sisman has postulated that Mozart modeled the slow movement on a theme-and-variations movement from the Symphony No. 75 of Joseph Haydn.[8]

References

  1. ^
    JSTOR 3526277
    .
  2. JSTOR 898906
    .
  3. ^ Hutchings (p. 290)
  4. ^ Steinberg
  5. ISBN 0-521-80734-4
    ), p. 88.
  6. JSTOR 855524
    .
  7. JSTOR 10.1525/jm.2001.18.1.129
    .
  8. JSTOR 899584
    .

Sources

External links
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