Piano Concerto No. 25 (Mozart)

Music#

The concerto is scored for solo piano, flute, two oboes, two bassoons, two horns in C, two trumpets in C, timpani and strings. It is one of Mozart’s longest concertos, with average performance durations of 29–33 minutes. The concerto has the following three movements: The C major concerto is frequently compared to Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony; Eric Blom writes that the concerto “reveals a concentration of workmanship and a grandeur which make it the counterpart to the Jupiter Symphony among the concertos”. Girdlestone considers its closest parallel to be the String Quintet in C, K. 515. The expansive first movement (in sonata form) is one of Mozart’s most symphonic concerto movements. This movement subtly slips in and out of the minor several times. One of the movement’s secondary themes is a march that often reminds people of “La Marseillaise” and may have been an inspiration for the soon to be written “La Marseillaise”. This theme dominates the development section. Beethoven references this concerto in his own Fourth Piano Concerto. In addition, the famous motif in the first movement of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony resembles one found in this concerto. Also, Mozart’s Symphony No. 25 and Beethoven’s 5th concerti have a strong march-like theme in the first movement that is first played in minor and then reappears in major. The tranquil second movement is in sonata form but lacks a development section. It extensively uses the winds. The third movement is a sonata-rondo that opens with a gavotte theme from Mozart’s opera Idomeneo. Girdlestone considers this movement very serious-minded. Like the first movement, it touches upon the minor, but it ends assuredly and joyfully.

Critical reception#

In 1798, music critic Johann Friedrich Rochlitz called K. 503 “the most magnificent and difficult of all Mozart’s hitherto known concertos” and " maybe the most magnificent of all the concertos which have ever been written." According to Simon P. Keefe, K. 503 is now regarded “by common consent one of Mozart’s greatest masterpieces in the concerto genre.” It is often viewed as a “kindred spirit” or “the rival and the complement” of Mozart’s great C minor piano concerto, K. 491, completed a few months earlier. Keefe mentions and quotes Donald Tovey, Cuthbert Girdlestone, and Alfred Einstein as among the musicologists who uphold K. 503 as exemplary.

External links#

• • • BBC Discovering Music