Mozart: Piano Concertos, Vol. 7

Album review

Pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet continues his exploration of Mozart's Piano Concertos for Chandos Records, with Gabor Tackas-Nagy at the helm of the Manchester Camerata. This 7th volume features two brilliant, yet fundamentally different masterpieces; The Concerto in C minor is a seminal work of tormented Romanticism, while the Concerto in C major is asynchronous and untouchable; the archetypal classical concerto.

The expressive violence of the Concerto in C minor is somewhat softened by the elegance brought by the French pianist and his accompaniment, as if to show that there was a politeness in the despair that prevailed during the torments of the 18th century, which would only darken over the course of the following century. There is a common misconception that there are hints of the French national anthem in the opening allegro maestoso of the Concerto in C major, composed several years earlier. Bavouzet makes delightful use of this confusion by using the young pianist Kenneth Broberg’s cadenza (a passage played by the piano alone, right before the final reprise with the full orchestra), which incorporates the French anthem in a way that is as incongruous as it is ingenious.

The album begins with the overture to The Marriage of Figaro, which is a contemporary of the two solo works, and has the same theatricality as almost all of Mozart's concertos. The more attentive and knowledgeable listener will find within each of them passages referencing the operas, as if the composer wanted to hold up a mirror between two musical forms he was particularly fond of. © François Hudry/Qobuz