Pires in Mozart’s Piano Concerto no 27

Acclaimed as one of the greatest interpreters of Mozart, Portuguese/Brazilian pianist Maria-João Pires (b. 1944) is an artist who combines exquisite stylistic refinement with a serious effort to plumb the intellectual complexities and spiritual depths of music. Refusing to conform to the traditional image of a concert virtuoso, Pires emphasizes the spiritual dimensions of music, always searching for hidden meanings which may elude the analytical performer. This remarkable reverence towards works of music, clearly manifested in her performances of Mozart, was made explicit by her remark that, as a performer, she acts as a channel for the composer’s ideas.

Her recording of Mozart’s complete sonatas received the 1990 Grand Prix du Disque. One of her highly acclaimed recordings is “Mozart: The Piano Sonatas”. According to the Penguin Guide: “Maria João Pires is a stylist and a fine Mozartian. She is always refined yet never wanting in classical feeling, and she has a vital imagination. She strikes an ideal balance between poise and expressive sensibility, conveying a sense of spontaneity in everything she does”.

*** Live Video – Limited Availability ***

Maria-Joao Pires and Chamber Orchestra of Europe perform Mozart’s Piano Concerto no 27 in B-flat major K. 595. Video available until January 29 2011:

W. A. Mozart´s last piano concerto No. 27 in B flat major K. 595 followed by some years the series of highly successful concertos Mozart wrote for his own concerts, and by the time of its premiere Mozart was no longer so prominent a performer on the public stage. It is a popular assumption that this concerto was first performed at a concert on 4 March 1791 in Jahn´s Hall by Mozart and by a clarinetist Joseph Bähr.
Seen from today’s state of scholarship however there is absolutely no proof that Mozart actually performed K. 595 on this day. The concert might well have been premiered by Mozart’s pupil Barbara Ployer on the occasion of a public concert at the Auersperg palace in January 1791.
This was Mozart’s last appearance in a public concert, as he took ill in September 1791 and died on 5 December 1791. The manuscript is dated 5 January 1791. However, Alan Tyson’s analysis of the paper on which Mozart composed the work indicated that Mozart used this paper between December 1787 and February 1789, which implies composition well before 1791. Perhaps the most controversial aspect of the concertos is the extent to which Mozart (or other contemporary performers) would have embellished the piano part as written in the score. Mozart’s own ability to improvise was famous, and he often played from very sketchy piano parts. Furthermore, there are several very “bare” parts in the concerto scores that have led some to deduce that the performer is meant to improvise embellishments at these points, the most notorious being towards the end of the F sharp minor second movement of No. 23 in A major (K. 488) (the end of the first subject of the second movement of No. 24 in C minor, K. 491 is another example). Manuscript evidence exists to suggest that embellishment did occur (e.g. an embellished version of the slow movement of No. 23, apparently by his gifted pupil Barbara Ployer). In 1840, evidence was published from two brothers, Philipp Karl and Heinrich Anton Hoffmann, who had heard Mozart perform two concertos, Nos 19 and 26 (K. 459 and K. 537) in Frankfurt am Main in 1790. Philip Karl reported that Mozart embellished his slow movements “tenderly and tastefully once one way, once another according to the momentary inspiration of his genius”, and he later (1803) published embellished Mozart slow movements to six of his later concertos (K. 467, K. 482, K. 488, K. 491, K. 503 and K. 595).