Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos. 21 & 24

Album review

A series of Mozart piano concertos recorded by fortepianist Robert Levin and the Academy of Ancient Music started promisingly in the 1990s. Funding ran out, however, and the project was called off in 2000. Fans of the original series will be excited to hear that the COVID pandemic, which required a lot of closed-door recording sessions, has revived the cycle, which is now slated for completion. It resumes with this 2023 release, containing two favorite Mozart concertos, the Piano Concerto No. 21 in C major, K. 467, and Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor, K. 491. Those unfamiliar with Levin's work should sample well here, for this may well be unlike any other Mozart concerto performances they have heard. Levin, reasoning from the idea that Mozart's scores for the concertos are sometimes pretty fragmentary, concludes that he improvised at the keyboard and applies this to his own performances. He creates his own cadenzas, and these may be the best parts of his performances: many of them have a good deal of wit. He adds large amounts of ornamentation, also improvised, and he plays during the orchestral tutti, adding a kind of continuo and sometimes elaborating on this as well. One can argue about the validity of any or all of these approaches. Levin is not the first pianist to use them, but he perhaps takes the freedom further than the others (like Friedrich Gulda) who have done so. One should also note that Levin is also a scholar whose decisions are backed up by research. Ultimately, listeners will decide for themselves about his interpretations; enough have done so to put this release on the classical best-seller charts early in 2023.

© James Manheim /TiVo