Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor, K466

Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli (1920–1995) was born in Brescia, Italy. He began music lessons at the age of three and at ten he entered the Milan Conservatory. In 1939, he won first prize in the Geneva International Piano Competition, where he was acclaimed as ‘a new Liszt’ by pianist Alfred Cortot, a member of the judging panel.

His repertoire was strikingly small for a concert pianist of such stature, concentrating only on specific works. Owing to this obsessive perfectionism, relatively few recordings were officially released during Michelangeli’s lifetime. Debussy and Ravel as well as Chopin, Schumann, Liszt and Beethoven featured in his limited concert schedule. His recordings of Ravel and Debussy were considered essential for any collection.

Michelangeli was a connoisseur of the mechanics of the piano and he insisted that his concert instruments be in perfect condition. Whenever possible he took his own Steinway piano with him on tour. His last concert (all Debussy) took place on 7 May 1993 in Hamburg, Germany.

Any recording featuring Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli is an important event because he recorded very little in the studio, leaving the field open for many unauthorised versions to be released on the market. This authorised live SWR recording from the Ludwigsburg Festival in 1956 shows a Mozart style far removed from that presented today. These are full-blooded interpretations and show Michelangeli with a very strong forward drive, well supported by Antoine de Bavier, a pupil of Furtwängler.

The recording made by SWR is of excellent quality, showcasing Michelangeli’s superb playing. These two concertos (Michelangeli only played around five Mozart concertos) were performed throughout Michelangeli’s career, but the recording here was made when he was thirty-six years old and at the peak of his powers.

The sublime results were worth the wait: after forty years of collaboration, Maria João Pires and Maestro Claudio Abbado record two of Mozart’s most beloved piano concertos for the very first time.

Maria João Pires weaves dark, dramatic strains into the miraculous luminosity of the D minor Concerto No.20, K.466 with a simplicity that makes her Mozart supreme. She then bestows a glowing majesty upon Mozart’s last piano concerto, the serene Concerto No.27 K. 595 in B flat major, as only an artist of her gifts and profound experience can.

Orchestra Mozart and Maestro Abbado support Pires with translucent sound and immaculate style: an exceptional encounter between two musical giants of our time.

Hungarian pianist Annie Fischer suffered reprisals for her Jewish background, but after the Second World War she enjoyed her international breakthough with Mozart playing of gentle elegance, supple virtuosity and dramatic power.

This CD marks the beginning of a complete series of Mozart piano concertos being released on Accent. Arthur Schoonderwoerd is in great demand as a fortepiano performer. His ensemble Cristofori play on authentic instruments of the period or modern reproductions. The string parts in the orchestral accompaniment are played by just one musician per part.

Julius Katchen recorded two Mozart piano concertos with Peter Maag and they both appear on this CD, together with the Six German Dances, KV 509 – ‘a magnificent example of the power of a genuinely charismatic conductor’ as Tully Potter notes in his liner notes. Katchen first entered Decca’s London studios in 1947 and was still heavily involved in a major Brahms project when he died of cancer in Paris, the city that had long been his home. He made his debut at the age of ten, playing the Mozart D minor concerto. Like Peter Maag, he was a philosopher, having completed a four-year course at Haverford College in three years. A musician of immense warmth – as witnessed in these Mozart readings – his colossal technique was always understated.

Unfairly neglected, Mozart’s C major Concerto, KV 415 is a gem. At the time of this recording (1955), it was only the third to appear. Cor de Groot’s performance had the honour of being the first LP version and this was preceded by Artur Balsam’s 78rpm recording. It was to be another five years before the concerto was to be recorded again – in 1960 by Clara Haskil. The D minor Concerto is Mozart’s most Beethovenian, and indeed it is Beethoven’s cadenzas that Katchen uses for his recording. (For the C major concerto, even though Mozart’s cadenzas survive, Katchen does not play them, using one of his own in the opening movement.) Word has it that Mozart wrote his delightful set of six German Dances, KV 509 in one hour during an enjoyable trip to Prague in 1787. Unfathomably neglected, they were taped for this recording in Kingsway Hall in January 1959 and make their first appearance here since their initial release on a ten-inch LP.