Piano Concerto in A major K.414 (1782)

arranged for harp and orchestra by Catrin Finch

Allegro

Andante

Allegretto

A Mozart piano concerto with the solo part arranged for harp is not necessarily as weird an idea as it might seem. It is true that it would work with by no means all of them, but K.414 - one of three such works written for Mozart’s subscription concerts in Vienna in 1783 - lends itself to the harp with little adaptation.

In January 1783 Mozart placed an advertisement in the Wiener Diarium for subscriptions to a set of three new piano concertos, the first he had written since he had settled in Vienna 18 months earlier: ”These three concertos, which can be performed with full orchestra including wind instruments or only a quattro, that is with 2 violins, 1 viola and violoncello, will be available at the beginning of April to those who have subscribed to them (beautifully copied and supervised by the composer himself).” As it turned out, at 4 ducats the set (which Leopold Mozart thought too much), subscriptions for the concertos were slow to come in. They were successful in the concert hall, however, and they sold well when Artaria – encouraged no doubt by the idea that they could be performed comparatively cheaply with a string quartet – published them in 1785.

While it would be unthinkable to omit the wind instruments from such later piano concertos as the B flat major K.456 or the C minor K.491, where they have a concertante role to play, in the first three of Mozart’s Viennese concertos the wind instruments have very little that is not doubled or at least harmonically covered by the strings. Even so, hearing them played with a string quartet rather than an orchestra is a different experience. It is going too far to describe them in this version as “the first piano quintets,” since the piano part is far too soloistic for authentic chamber music, but there is a clear gain in intimacy even if there is a corresponding loss in colour.

The material of the A major Concerto K.414 is not so assertive that it cannot manage perfecty well without the cutting edge of the two oboes or the weight of the two horns. Wind instruments participate in the introduction of neither of the two main themes of the orchestral introduction, the second of which is all the better in the quartet version for the solo-strings texture. They are missed only at the major junctions – before the first entry of the piano, at the end of the exposition, before the cadenza – and for just two bars in the development where the piano is accompanied by oboes and horns without strings.

The slow movement is based on a theme, introduced by sotto voce strings, from an overture by the composer’s old friend J.C. Bach, who made a speciality of piano concertos in quintet form. Interestingly, however, that theme is answered by another, on first violin over throbbing middle voices, that clearly alludes to the opening theme of the first movement. Possibly intended as a memorial to Johann Christian, who died on 1 January 1782, this Andante is an intimately personal statement, above all in the minor-key episodes of the development. Wind instruments are missed as little here as they are in the concluding Rondeau, which is essentially a dialogue between piano and strings - to the extent that the strings get to participate in the cadenza. There are, in fact, two different sets of cadenzas for this work, the more sophisticated of them written four years later than the concerto itself, but they both include the intervention of the strings in the third-movement cadenza.

The Piano Concerto in A major seems to have been one of Mozart’s own favourites. Certainly, he had it in his repertoire long enough to renew the cadenzas for it. There are two quite different sets. One of these is “neither too easy nor too difficult,” the happy medium on which - as Mozart promised his cautious father in 1782 - the whole work is written. The other is technically more demanding and must date from some time later, when Mozart felt both the confidence and the need to make more of a virtuoso display in his public performances.

There is also a rejected alternative version of the finale (dated 19 October 1782), which is another indication of the value Mozart attached to the work. Along with its companion concerto in F K413 and C K415, it was one of his first major enterprises since he had begun to support himself as a freelance musician in Vienna. He was obviously concerned that it should represent him at his best. So it is all the more remarkable that it so convincingly retains its unselfconscious and spontaneous appearance. One idea flows naturally and effortlessly into the next.

The witty phrasing of the first bars of the first subject gives rise to the syncopations in the same theme, and they are reflected in the following bridge passage. There is a similar rhythmic peculiarity in the second subject, which is not so like the first as to seem a deliberate derivation but which is like enough to have been influenced by it. Mozart’s fascination with this second subject is one of the most engaging characteristics of the work. Before the end of the orchestral exposition, he presents is in a different form, though again on violin with an attractive viola counterpoint; and the soloist, after adding two new themes to the first subject, introduces his own version of the second, with right hand crossing backwards and forwards over the left. Although none of the main themes figures in the development, which is more a harmonic adventure than a thematic one, the second subject is the almost exclusive concertn of the earlier of the two cadenzas. In the other cadenza, which is longer and showier but stylistically less appropriate, it appears not at all.

One advantage of the later cadenza is that it keeps the first subject in mind and so helps Mozart make a structural point of a kind which is rare in his work. Immediately after the introduction of the main theme of the Andante, there is a loud D major chord and then a quiet and presumably deliberate allusion on violins to the first subject of the first movement. The reference is still clearer when the soloist takes it up, having modulated to A major after his first entry with the main theme of the movement in D major. Again, after the reprise of the main themes, there is a choice of cadenzas - the earlier being the more modest and more appropriate stylistically, but the later incorporating another useful reference to the main theme of the first movement.

In the Allegretto, although there is another choice of cadenzas, they are both devoted to the same theme. It is not the main theme of the rondo, the witty little mock fanfare with which it begins, but the quiet little legato melody heard just after it on unison strings. This is, in fact, the most fertile idea in the whole movement. It supplies the material for most of the first episode and, after the first return of the rondo theme, it promptly reappears, briefly disappears for the soloist’s introduction of a new theme in d major and then, in its many-sided way, dominate the recapitulation. The natural place for the main theme to shine is not in the cadenza but the coda