The concertos that Mozart wrote for his favourite instrument play a role in the history of their genre comparable to that played in the history of the symphony by Beethoven's nine masterpieces. Just as the Beethovenian symphony determined the form of the genre for nearly a century, so Mozart's piano concertos, by their number and by the great beauty of most of them, are at the origin of the modern concerto and have drawn the lines along which it has long developed. The challenge for the late 18th-century composers was that of reconciling the Baroque concerto form’s strongest features (distinct timbral contrats between a solo instrumentalist and an orchestra, plus brillant solo writing) with the new style of sonata-allegro. An accomplished virtuoso himself, Mozart elevated the piano soloist’s function to new levels of expression, technique, and dramatic momentum. Consequently, the piano and orchestra were not merely equal partners, but distinct characters in their own right. Of all the great composers, Mozart is the one who has enriched the library of the genre with the greatest number of masterpieces. Among most masters, concertos hold a relatively small place, much smaller, for example, than symphonies or quartets. In his case, on the contrary, they are more numerous than any other composition, with the exception of symphonies. However, in the eyes of the musician who is less concerned with the history of the form than with the personality of each work, the thought that inspires it and the joy it can bring, his concertos are even more precious because they are an inexhaustible source of artistic enjoyment. They form a group of masterpieces that we practice continuously without ever getting tired of. In their diversity, they correspond to the most varied states of mind, from the contentment where we ask the art to be a simple distraction, delicate rather than profound, from the frank and animal joy of life, physical and moral health and the perfect balance of all faculties, to melancholy, pain and even revolt, to that "Olympian" serenity that reaches the invigorating air of the high peaks. There are few moments in our interior life that do not find in one or the other the tonic they need. This is the hallmark of the greatest works, and it places these concertos among the most enduring products of music. The relative uniformity that at first glance one would think to see between them disappears under scrutiny. Emotion never reproduces itself identically from one work to the next; a particular physiognomy in each of them makes it possible to differentiate them, and the variety of their inspiration is always greater as one deepens the study. It is thanks to this variety that Mozart is one of the few composers who can be considered a daily breadwinner. It does not matter how diverse the form is; the diversity of emotion is the one that our mind demands and the only one that prevents boredom. Many musicians have a more varied form than that of Mozart, and their works, nevertheless, when we want to enjoy them, soon provoke a feeling of monotony which the Mozart of great works never causes and which we only suffer with him if we persist in studying him in compositions where he did not put the depths of himself. This 'privilege that belongs to them' to satisfy the soul and the spirit in a lasting way, even more than their historical role, has earned his piano concertos their place among the ranks of masterpieces. Nowhere more than in his andantes did Mozart show how much his personal expression was able to take on the form that the custom of his time presented to him. In some of his allegros and rondos, we can sometimes perceive the symmetry and regularity of a section to the point where the form imposes itself on our attention more than the feeling. In his andantes, inspiration and technique, lyricism and construction, merge with such unity that nothing distracts us from the beauty of thought itself. The concertos would not deserve the highly representative place they occupy in Mozart's work if their andantes were not equal to the best of the quartets and symphonies. No other group of movements surpasses them in variety. We feel, however, that certain movements are related to each other, that there are "families of movements" and this allows us to establish a certain classification among them. Thus Mozart's andantes, despite their richness and diversity, and with a few exceptions, can be divided into four or five types, which we can label, for the sake of convenience, the andante galant, the dreaming andante, the meditative andante or adagio, the cantabile andante or romance, and the elegiac andante or dramatic. No one will be fooled by this classification to the point of believing it to be absolute. But it can help us to embrace more easily all those andantes in which Mozart delivered his most precious possession. Mozart’s concertos, however, were far from concert hall staples in the early 20th century. Yet the tide began to turn. A new generation of classically oriented keyboard luminaries, whose ranks included Wanda Landowska, Walter Gieseking, Edwin Fischer and Arthur Schnabel, helped further the cause, as did Lili Kraus. Kraus likened her affinity with Mozart to a mission : ''When I began to explore Mozart, I discovered the infinite beauty of that music, and somehow it is given to me to give life to that beauty. I find it my God-given duty, privilege, and if you like, cross, to consecrate my life to this music.'' Certain pianists and composers become inextricably linked in the eyes of the public. Mention Glenn Gould, for instance, and Bach’s Goldberg Variations come to mind. Artur Schnabel and Beethoven were virtually synonymous; so were Walter Gieseking and Debussy, Arthur Rubinstein and Chopin, Alicia de Larrocha and the Spanish Impressionists. When it came to Mozart’s piano music, several generations of listeners and collector considered Lili Kraus’s interpretations to be the last word.. END
