Fernsy opines: Mozart Piano Concerto no. 22 in E-flat
Angles to consider: what effect time of year had on composition.
First Movement: Exposition
When I began listening in earnest to Mozart Piano Concertos, at 17,
most of my mates were overlooking classical music. I remember one celebrated
occasion when the door to my room was opened while I was doing some work
and a mate of mine said “Gosh, you’re brave.” I was listening to the Pastoral
Symphony, an old Hans Swarowsky reading with the “European Community Symphony
Orchestra”, which brought to mind images of Neil Kinnock and Leon Brittan
feverishly drawing bows across their violae...
My reaction to this quite trivial incident was one of mild surprise. Bravery
had nothing to do with it. Perhaps I had been brave at first, but I really
wasn’t too bothered. My public image lived and died (frequently) on much
larger issues. For the first time, though, I wondered why people felt such
an aversion to music of such brain-scrambling skill and beauty. It is a question
that has only ever been partially answered.
A further anecdote concerns a rather effortful friend of mine at Oxford,
who, sharing my love of good music, nevertheless professed to not be impressed
by the Mozart Piano Concertos. When pressed for a reason why, he exclaimed.
“Well, they all start the same way - you have a theme, and then it’s repeated
a tone upwards,” an argument I could not refute - de gustibus etc.
- and anyway, he had a point. I have come across an excellent essay
here
that shows why Mozart was able to do this. All I can add to it is that it
wasn't different in Mozart's time; it wasn't that public taste was any different,
it's just that the public as a whole tended to live their life according
to concordant religious principles. That this was largely based on fear of
societal retribution cannot be ignored. Society should not be used to impose
religion. This is what Thatcher was getting at when she said "Society doesn't
exist." We have to create society afresh every day. Given the conditions
under which Mozart was writing (set forth in the above link), we can see
that not only did he have the opportunity to get highbrow with a guaranteed
audience, he had an obligation to do so.
The same friend, when he was a bit more relaxed, after I had known him
for a year or two, waxed lyrical over the opening of this concerto. It isn’t
hard to hear why. Within the first few seconds of the huge opening chord,
a trill, and then wind, the thing is repeated on exactly the same notes with
the strings, usually the kshatriya caste of the orchestra, proving subordinate
to their erstwhile servants. And introducing... the creamy clarinets!!! To
us souls, reared on a diet of musical abundance, wobbling guitars and extremes
of fast and slow, such sedate and tonally-pure music enters “with a healing
grace” (Foxx), yet even in terms of Mozartean beginnings, this one is extraordinary
in the way such content glides forth from such a fierce opening.
So Mozart pulls one trick on his audience. Now we get the strings? No.
It is the flute, of all instruments; the flute, the instrument Mozart detested,
that introduces the next part. Is this not the eighteenth-century equivalent
of Mahler taking the piss with his funeral march in the 1st symphony? Except
in our conception of the eighteenth century we see Mozart determined to raise
eyebrows rather than revolutions. If the history of man at least since the
dark ages ( kali yuga) has been the gradual liberation from tyranny,
then we should at least pay passing homage to the idea that eighteenth century
society might have been the sort of place where to upset the egos of the violinists
and the delicate musical understanding of a gentry who were fascistly conservative
was not an easy path. Mozart's misfortunes were more than just occasioned
by the odd politically-daring opera. I would guess.
The role of the violins in the entire exposition is that of adding little
fluttering embellishments or afterthoughts or of riding on the back of the
fortissimo passages. Even when they come up with a foregrounded motive themselves
it is usurped instantly by other instruments, or their thunder is stolen
in other ways! Mozart’s touch of genius here is to have that little string
phrase at the end, as if they are conscious of having been so totally outplayed
that they stay on the pitch for a post-match training session. Selfishly,
they spoil our sense of rhythmic proportion. “Cop a load of this, you bastards”
is the message, mediated through the language of civil disobedience. But,
presumably to their dismay, they are mimicked by the wind a second later.
Something is in the air, and that something might just eventually produce
Beethoven.
Then in comes the piano, gaily disregarding all that has gone before it,
like some jovial management consultant.taking the minds of the players off
what has gone before. It strikes me the the piano is much more restrained
in this concerto than it was in its immediate predecessor, 21 in C Major,
where it tends to jump and swoop and flutter. Listening to it this morning,
I extended this thought process; this concerto is a move towards the emancipation,
not only of the woodwind, but of the piano as well. I wonder if anyone can
provide musical back-up or historical evidence for this next point: remember
that the piano is still in development at this stage. It is a new instrument
and its role is far from defined. There are parts of Mozart where the piano
scoring is far from "successful", where in the background it gurgles away,
hardly heard by the side of the orchestra. Is it too much of a leap to imagine
that people didn't quite know what to do with the new instrument, and that
there was a trend towards treating it as a continuo instrument? Certainly
the modern piano sounds much too heavy for a continuo, but listening to period
instrument recordings (actually, of Beethoven's 5th Piano Concerto) the piano
sounds a tad underprepared as an instrument, like a pitch on the morning
of a test match that needs one more day to dry out. I'm not knocking such
recordings - John Eliot Gardner takes his place among the musical pioneers
of the last century. I also encountered some resentment of Gardner's achievements
among musical scholars at Oxford. I watched in baffled amusement as two of
my friends put a JEG recording to the back of a rack in the Virgin megastore.
They had their reasons, I expect, and after all, in terms of musical appreciation,
I'm with Horace, tenues grandia (you will have noticed this is not
the case with much. I once had to defend Clive James against the charge of
pretentiousness at one of my mother's parties. If you think Clive James is
pretentious, you haven't understood what he's doing. I often don't understand
what he's doing, and I doubt he does, but at least he does it). Anyway, back
to the concerto. Then it’s down to business. The piano manages to push the
strings’ contribution even further into the background on that opening theme.
But its influence is benign over the next few bars. Strings provide even more
of a civilized backdrop for the piano. And then, the most splendid thing;
a brief intervention from woodwind and, yes, real drama!! anger!! chromatics!!!
Given that in the balance of forces the early piano could easily have been
outweighed by the sort of fortissimo the orchestra has shown a penchant
for in this piece, this growl has for me a Christ-among-the-money-changers
quality to it; the humble individual, the management consultant showing
that for all his joviality, he too (or rather she too, for Uchida tinkles
the ivories in my recording) is riled by injustice and the sort of pointless
power-struggles which were going on in the exposition. Yes, let society evolve
through discussion, but beware the ego.
The flash of anger is brief. Was it a flash at the
pride of the woodwind a moment or two before? Who knows? I like to think
so: it supports my theory. What supports my theory even more is the subtle
concord of the strings beneath this momentary loss of temper.
For the next few minutes, notice how all the orchestra is subordinate
to the piano. And when the orchestra comes back in for a tutti, it
is devoid of the in-fighting that marred the exposition. However, we have
still only reached the end of the exposition...
Development
Mozartean development tends to let the piano have its head, but in few pieces
to such release as is achieved here. As if satisfied that all parties are
at least being civil to each other now, the piano lets its strings down in
marked contrast to the melodic and rhythmic restraint of its opening melody.
This is its first real moment of reward for some sterling work throughout
the exposition. Note how the cascade of notes suddenly becomes a tune. One
thing to note here, which also could have been noted about the first time
the orchestra repeats the opening fanfare after the piano's entry, is Mozart's
developing interest in running ends and beginnings of phrases together, something
that really comes to fruition in the Clarinet Concerto. It is as if the pianist
avoids crashing into an a-rhythmic wall by the skin of his teeth by a little
hop onto his other foot. Another interesting point is how, just as the music
seems about to set off again (the piano repeats a run up the keyboard twice,
throwing in an Eb that sounds very dissonant, and by the third time we're
expecting it to swoop off again) it centres itself with a Bb which allows
it to find its way back to...
Recapitulation
When I was talking to our college Organ Scholar once, I happened to make
an obscure point about form. He grinned and said "Ah, well, the current trend
is towards the question, Is there such a thing as musical form?" Such
speculation is of the one-hand-clapping variety, endlessly useful yet refreshingly
pointless. The tripartite structure of exposition-development-recapitulation
forms a neat cultural lens through which to view the crystal of Mozart's
creation, but the critic must remember that chaos is stronger than order,
for chaos takes no effort. To turn this into more positive terms, intellectual
systems crash at the intrusion of the unexpected; there is always more. For
every scale there is a discord, but does that mean we should discard the
scale? Thus, I define the recapitulation of this movement in terms of the
final arbitration of the piano between the strings and the wind, and the
approachment of an accord between all the parties of the orchestra, in terms
of rhythm and melody. I am listening to Brahms Piano Concerto no 2 at the
moment, and I have only an idea of how well that little lot is going to translate
when I come to go through the music note by note. But I'm going to have a
go, so watch this space.
I may continue this review later on. “None but a blockhead ever wrote, except
for money.” JOHNSON.