Mozart K.595 PC -2018 Proms-Piemontesi

[Rach3]

Starts about 22 : 00 in:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/play/b0b9w238

Francesco Piemontesi a pianist I follow, and usually regard his pianism highly.Not sure what historical practice suggests here, but my taste inclines to a simpler treatment of the slow movement themes, less embellishment, eg. Backhaus/Bohm 1952 recording. Still, fine reading here.K.595 one of my fav Mozart PC's, along with K.467, 466, 453,415,271.

[John F]

No doubt Mozart ornamented each return of the theme differently, but I prefer it kept simple - Schnabel, Curzon and Serkin do it the way I like.

[jbuck919]

No doubt Mozart ornamented each return of the theme differently, but I prefer it kept simple - Schnabel, Curzon and Serkin do it the way I like.

It is far more difficult to ornament Mozart than, say, Bach. Bach's ornamentation opportunities, shall we call them, are fairly obvious, while with a few exceptions we have little idea how Mozart varied things that way. Once I heard a recording of the K 488 with its famous siciliano slow movement, which has one of the most poignant endings in all of Mozart. The pianist dared to ornament the repetition of the bare motif of that ending on its repetition. I cannot remember who it was, but it was exceedingly beautiful. Certainly Mozart did not intend that passage to be played twice in bare bones.

[John F]

Actually, several of Mozart's concertos have quite a lot of ornamentation written into the score, which he provided to his sister or one of his pupils to perform. Seems they weren't as good at improvising as he was. In other concertos the piano part is very sketchy - No. 26 is the prime example, with passages he must have improvised or played from memory at the premiere. Maybe the performance you speak of was by Robert Levin, the most expert and imaginative at "filling out" Mozart's piano writing.