Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 8 in C major, K246 "Lützow"

The phenomenal Angela Hewitt embarks upon another Hyperion journey, this time through the piano concertos of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

The twenty-seven concertos for piano and orchestra contain some of the composer’s greatest achievements. Concertos Nos 6 and 8, two of the young Mozart’s earliest attempts at the genre, display a perfection of form and an elegant purity. Concerto No 9, the ‘Jeunehomme’, remarkably written in 1777 when Mozart was 21, is considered to be the composer’s first great masterpiece. The result of this creative outburst was a monument of musical originality and inventive orchestration. As the American critic Michael Steinberg aptly put it, in this concerto ‘Mozart, so to speak, became Mozart’.

In these interpretations Angela Hewitt displays her characteristic elegance and innate musicality. She is supported by the impeccably refined playing of the Orchestra da Camera di Mantova and the disc includes a personal and illuminating note by the pianist.

Midem Classique Award winner Christian Zacharias continues his survey of Mozart Piano Concertos as both performer and conductor. Featuring arguably on of the most famous, the A Major, MDG presents the disc on a hybrid SACD in their fantastic warm acoustic.

Mozart’s earliest piano concertos are not, in fact, original compositions but rather pastiches or arrangements of other composers’ works. The pieces presented in this recording date from a later period in Mozart’s youth; they are his first original concertos for piano and orchestra. Each one of these concertos seems to be a small capsule containing the secrets of the future masterpieces. The works truly announce the reinvention of the piano concerto; throughout history, Mozart will remain the greatest master of the genre. Mozart’s very first original piano concerto, in D major, can leave a listener completely bewildered. In his very first attempt at writing in this genre, Mozart already shows rare certitude and an incredible amount of audacity. In this work, written at the age of seventeen, Mozart not only proudly declares his love for the piano concerto, but also clearly affirms his determination to detach himself from the light, eighteenth century Galant Style.

Praised by the New York Times for his first concert at New York’s Lincoln Center in 2004, David Greilsammer has since then been regularly invited to perform in the most important concert halls worldwide and under the leading conductors of our time. This recording, his debut as pianist and conductor for the American label Vanguard Classics was hailed by the critics and selected by the Daily Telegraph as one of the ‘CDs of the Year’ in 2006. It is now being re-issued on his new label Naïve