Where there is music, Mozart’s music sweeps across like the wind and ascends in crescendo. He composed forty one symphonies; searching, moving with profound. The magic in his piano concertos exalted creations deeply involved and convinced that a score could colour and compliment. Mozart displayed these convictions in masterpieces such as Ave Verum, The Magic Flute, The Marriage of Figaro. etc. Among many of the religious scores he wrote, I have a great affinity to Laudate deminum because it was a setting for Psalm 116. The list is endless one surpassing the other. Mazart’s piano concertos are his autobiography and among the high points. His personality is revealed in these works. Some provide tricky moments but exhilarating romp for the listeners.
So, when Britten Sinfonia at the Royal festival Hall commissioned the world renowned conductor, Paul Lewis to conduct a lecture/ class on Mozart’s Piano Concerto No.27 in B flat major on LARGHETTO and ALLEGRO to refresh our mind among a selected lot, it took me back years of study and recall the warmth and aura that simply glowed within my memory and made it easy to absorb every note of this magnificent score.
 Paul Lewis in thoughtful mood.
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We all know that Mozart was primarily a brilliant pianist before realizing himself as a composer which naturally made him compose for the keyboard but when the realization dawned on him that his scores were better played on strings, he shifted his attention. Today almost all his scores are string-bound with occasional solos on keyboard such as the one played by Paul Lewis today, rising to phenomenal momentum the way Mozart himself would have caressed the keys himself.
Lewis plays with that clarity of texture and sense of momentum within the states that Mozart intended and unless pianists like him with formidable prodigious technique, will fail to interpret the powerful intellect of Mozart.
Although we celebrate Mozart primarily for his skills as a composer, he came to public attention as a prodigious pianist at the age of six. Mozart was hailed as a virtuoso when he found fame on a concert platform and continued widely as a soloist throughout his career.
Viennese musicologist, Alfred Orel wrote of the B flat concerto;- ‘The contrasts which previously striven to overcome, here yield to an overall unity. This concerto is measure of all that an artist had now laid aside’
Let us look at his lyrical simplicity which I too can comprehend as lyrics have been my main forte both is poetry and classical music. Mozart’s final concerto is an unselfconscious work that precedes lyricism and direct expression above drama. Rather that dazzling the listener with virtuosic display, the B flat concerto is almost speech- like in its clarity. Here simplicity is not born of innocence but rather from clarity.
And as I watched Paul Lewis’s vigorous playing, the keys screeched to bond with the melody. He had no mercy on the keys as he began brightly in B flat major but there was a faint hint on the relative G minor. This, I am not very sure since I was awful in theory. Could have been possible and the playing was so swift that I missed the key and there was no repetition on the keyboard.
There has never been a child prodigy in the annals of musical history when he composed his first score at the age of six, he stood on toes to reach the high keyboard of the family of the Mozart family. And no wonder, he wrote only for the piano. His first compositions were published in Paris in 1963 when he was seven years old and Mozart senior realized he had a prodigy in his hands.
Someone said of Mozart that when angels sing for god, unaware to the composer, God would eavesdrop. What makes him stand apart?
Everything thing that music offered, nothing left out. He would turn one and all into masterpieces during his short life on earth few weeks before his thirsty sixth birthday.
The REQUIEM for his death is as mysterious as some of his scores. When a mysterious visitor commissioned the REQUIEM MASS, Mozart though he was from another world and that the REQUIEM was for his own soul. Mozart did not live long enough to complete the score but where he had incomplete it, the REQUIEM was played.
No. 27, In B flat, K595, concerto for 2 pianos in E flat, K365 was played solo by Paul Lewis on grand keyboard with extra octaves (which I presumed as he had to overstretch) only a pianist of his caliber could reach out.
Full of emotional turmoil and pathos No. 27 was written when Mozart was already ill with its contrasting, brilliant spontaneity with autumnal resignation. The two-piano Concretes provided tricky moments for the player that sent my head reeling too.
But Lewis rose to the occasion and before he could lift his fingers off the keyboard, the audience brought down the roof.
Like symphonies, concertos should not be heard one after the other and Lewis being aware of this factor gave us an interval of two minutes between the ones he played. Concertos are not immediately accessible and together they could prove emotionality draining. At least, the sound of aura should cease and ears ready to take on the next.
His sound is unmistakable after few bars and his profound melodic ideas are idiosyncratic which the normal lover of music will fail to understand or absorb. It is strange that Mozart fans will lap up anything and everything he composed no matter whether they are orchestral or set upon winged strings. Essentially a concerto scorer, his own piano playing became infectious that critics and conductors found it, at times, to set apart.
But that was not what Mozart professed when he wrote from his heart. Some were so very musical that they were even hummable themes very piquant and harmonic. He had no attitude, not self-conscious or overbearing. They were the outcome of refreshing, instinctive Romantic and we his followers think that way.
That is the reason that Paul Lewis elected the B flat concerto No. 27 as the central repertoire in its classical symphony.
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