Mozart / Piano Concerto No. 19 in F major, K. 459 (Anda)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)

Piano Concerto No. 19 in F major, K. 459 (1784)

00:00 - Allegro vivace (Cadenza: Mozart)
12:10 - Allegretto
20:22 - Allegro assai (Cadenza: Mozart)

Performed by Géza Anda (Pianist & Conductor) and the Camerata Academica des Salzburgers Mozarteums (1967).

"The last concerto of 1784, the one in F major (K. 459), finished on 11 December, was surely written with Mozart himself alone in mind. This work exhibits a fine sense of climax. Each of the three movements is more beautiful than the preceding, so that one might almost call it a finale-concerto. The first movement, with its persistent march rhythm, shows more strongly than any other concerto of Mozart's the influence of the violin concertos of Viotti. We know that Mozart composed a new middle movement for Viotti's 16th Concerto, and this can hardly have been his first acquaintance with the works of the great violinist of Piedmont, who, as Gerber says, had been 'famous since 1783,' and had already toured the entire continent. Now the 'ideal march' is typical of Viotti's first movements; there is hardly one among his twenty-nine concertos that does not have all the characteristics of such an ideal march—the firm step, the dotted rhythms, the military bearing. The seriousness of many of these concertos, too, must have made an impression on Mozart. One of the earlier ones, the 6th, issued in 1782 or 1783, is in D minor. Now the military element had not been foreign to Mozart's concertos even before this, but he had never emphasized it as strongly as in this movement... Joyful assurance—that is the character of this movement. At the same time, it seems in a way like a festal introduction to the Allegretto in C—not, be it noted, in B-flat—which, in its charming and so often melancholy dreaming, is like an instrumental version, or a projection into the infinite realm of the instrumental, of all the emotions that are later expressed in Susanna's aria 'Deh vieni, non tardar.' The last movement exhibits the play of all the spirits of Ariel's troupe, with Colombina, Arlecchino, and Papageno joining them now and again. This is opera buffa translated into the domain of instrumental music, and at the same time a masterful play with the 'learned' element, a fusion of homophony and polyphony‐ one of the few instances in which Mozart uses counterpoint in mocking vein. This Finale contains a few rhythms that are to be found note for note in Mozart's pantomime for the Carnival of 1783 (K. 446)." - Alfred Einstein

Painting: The Fountain, Hubert Robert