Mozart composed his Piano Concerto No. 24 in February 1786 for his own performance in Vienna which presumably took place on 7 April. The composer was thirty at the time and his main concern was Le nozze di Figaro (he was known to compose several drastically different works at the same time). Mozart’s exceptionally neat manuscripts are often talked about; they bespeak of the easiness and smoothness of Mozart’s composing process. However, the manuscript of the concerto in C minor shows quite the opposite. Mozart worked through trial and error; he drew caricatures in place of his mistakes. The composition was a tense struggle for Mozart. The music he created was just like that – “high tension” music.
Beethoven once remarked, "Cramer, Cramer, we will never write anything like that,” referring to Johann Baptist Cramer, a composer, pianist, and publisher from London. The musicians were walking through the Viennese Augarten, where Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 24 was performed at the time. That is how Beethoven reacted to the evolution of a simple theme wrought up to the dramatic climax: a characteristically Beethoven-esque pattern. Mozart is, of course, fantastic; but it is impossible not to remember Beethoven when listening to Piano Concerto No. 24. The key of C minor is also Beethoven-esque. Undoubtedly, Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor is inspired by Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 24. The Viennese salon classicism works are mostly in the major key, while the minor key is a rare exception, a shadow, a stark contrast, a powerful device. Out of 600 works by Mozart only around forty are in the minor key, while a third of them are composed in C minor, the most tragic key. Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 24 is his only concerto which not only opens, but also closes in the minor key.
Piano Concerto No. 24 is a “stand-alone” work of Mozart’s for a number of other reasons. The large-scale first movement contains 508 bars (musicologists have calculated the average number of bars in the first movements of Mozart’s concertos and the result was 344). The biggest orchestra line-up. The only concerto that features both oboes and clarinets with special emphasis on the woodwinds. This concerto also opens in triple meter, an unusual feature of Mozart's 27 Piano Concerti (only Concerti No. 11 and No. 14 open in triple meter). The finale is a set of variations, which is also unusual. A great variety of music themes is widely used, including as polyphonic elements. And, finally, richness and depth of the images: stark heroics and desperation, greatness and meekness, fury and gentleness, pain and consolation. The conventional titles of the movements – Allegro, Larghetto and Allegretto – do not fully express the vastness and complexity of the concerto’s music world, which is full of dramatic collisions. It is a formidable task for any performer to open the inexhaustible richness of this world to their audience.
Johann Nepomuk Hummel was among the best virtuoso pianists of his day. His piano skills made him a rival of Beethoven, with whom he had a tumultuous friendship. Hummel studied with Mozart, Salieri, Clementi, Albrechtsberger (Beethoven’s teacher), and Haydn; he was a teacher of Henselt, Thalberg, Czerny, and Mendelssohn. His talent manifested itself very early. He was just twelve years old when he first starred on stage in Vienna, where he moved in 1793. The European pianist’s performances in St Petersburg and Moscow in 1822 were acclaimed by the public.
As a concert pianist, Humell was a prolific composer for his instrument. Experts put Hummel’s music somewhere in between the era of Viennese Classicism and Romanticism. When composing his piano concertos – and Hummel has eight such concertos – the composer used Mozart’s “templates,” while also employing some of Chopin’s and Schumann’s future inventions. Chopin included Hummel’s music into his concert repertory. Schumann carefully studied two of Hummel’s works – Piano Sonata No. 5 In F-sharp Minor and Piano Concerto No. 2 in A minor – in 1829. Schumann’s studies were later reflected in the composer’s own piano concerto, for which he chose the same key that Hummel did for his.
Hummel's Piano Concerto No. 2 in A minor was written in 1816 and published in Vienna in 1821. It was a great success and was frequently performed and republished several times. In terms of structural make-up, the concerto follows the traditional three movement form: Allegro moderato – Larghetto – Rondo. The first large-scale movement opens with a tranquil melancholic and yet agitated theme against a delicately syncopated backdrop. Allusions to Mozart are followed by allusions to Beethoven, especially during the energetic and hardly sentimental marching parts. On the other end of the spectrum is Chopin’s crystal-like melismatic style. The second movement opens with emphatic fortissimo with orchestral fanfare which introduces the soloist’s entrance. The soloist performs an inspirational romantic nocturne con gran espressione. However, the second movement is only a short respite as the pianist leads his listener further and opens the finale, where the song-like refrain alternates with different interludes. Hummel’s studies in counterpoint under Albrechtsberger did yield results as the polyphonic sections in the finale focus the attention of the listener. The concerto is dizzyingly complex from a technical standpoint because the composer counted on his own phenomenal piano technique. Runs of parallel thirds sprinkled all over the solo part were Hummel’s calling card. The pianist’s virtuoso and absolute mastery of his instrument and his enthralled listeners culminates in the coda.
Khristina Strekalovskaya
