Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos 6, 8 & 9 – Angela Hewitt, Orchestra da Camera di Mantova Hyperion

Piano Concerto No 6 in B flat major K238[19’59]arr. Angela Hewitt (b1958)
1
Allegro aperto[6’54]
2
Andante un poco adagio[6’01]
3
Rondeau: Allegro[7’04]
Piano Concerto No 8 in C major ‘Lützow’ K246[22’30]
4
Allegro aperto[7’38]
5
Andante[7’29]
6
Rondeau: Tempo di menuetto[7’23]
Piano Concerto No 9 in E flat major ‘Jeunehomme’ K271[32’47]
7
Allegro[10’32]
8
Andantino[11’38]
9
Rondeau: Presto – Menuetto: Cantabile – Presto[10’37]

The phenomenal Angela Hewitt embarks upon another Hyperion journey, this time through the piano concertos of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

The twenty-seven concertos for piano and orchestra contain some of the composer’s greatest achievements. Concertos Nos 6 and 8, two of the young Mozart’s earliest attempts at the genre, display a perfection of form and an elegant purity. Concerto No 9, the ‘Jeunehomme’, remarkably written in 1777 when Mozart was 21, is considered to be the composer’s first great masterpiece. The result of this creative outburst was a monument of musical originality and inventive orchestration. As the American critic Michael Steinberg aptly put it, in this concerto ‘Mozart, so to speak, became Mozart’.

In these interpretations Angela Hewitt displays her characteristic elegance and innate musicality. She is supported by the impeccably refined playing of the Orchestra da Camera di Mantova and the disc includes a personal and illuminating note by the pianist.