Mozart Piano Concerto K. 488 Project

Abstract

The 20th-century heralded unprecedented change in ‘classical’ music performance aesthetics as documented in sound recordings. By 1950, many unnotated expressive techniques (belonging to a long-established continuum of practice) had been all but expunged. In this ascendant modern style, the notation came to be considered sacrosanct, arguably for the first time ever. Compositions from Bach to Brahms donned identities and sound worlds that largely reflected their notation, largely devoid of individual artistic expression, and increasingly homogenous across performances and recordings. This text-literal ‘classicised’ style remains pervasive, even in historically informed performance (HIP), and has stultified performers and audiences alike.

But innovative methods including: i) emulation/imitation of 19th-century-trained musicians on record; ii) cyclical processes in applying historical written evidence; and, iii) period instrument performance, can reignite artistic agency to help unlock the modernist sound of canonic works. This recording provides a novel reading of Mozart’s Piano Concerto K. 488, recently recorded by Neal Peres Da Costa with the Australian Romantic & Classical Orchestra. Referencing, among other significant evidence, the ear-opening 1904 piano roll by Carl Reinecke (b. 1824)—lauded as preserver of an ‘old’ Mozart tradition—of his piano solo arrangement of the K. 488 slow movement, we re-enact documented Mozartian practices of note dis-alignment, marked rhythm and tempo variation, and ornamentation. In so doing, we reimagine Mozart as unbridled, blustery, varied, and rhetorical, an alternative to the expected identities for his music of pretty, neat, tidy, and balanced. Such vivification of past musical practices can inspire renewed artistry and expressivity in the staging of classical music.