Re: GG: [Bach-List]

[Richard Vallis <rvpiano@spec.net>]

Yes, I checked in Grove (not always the most accurate source); apparently the only
cadenzas to Mozart concertos Beethoven wrote were for the 1st and 3rd movements of the D
minor Concerto.  Anyway, the C minor cadenza does have a similar quality to those D
minor cadenzas.  I don't find it wierd or as bizarrely out of style as that to the C
major concerto.  Both are ravishingly played though.
Interesting to note the various continuo applications with regard to counterpoint, but
one is not used to hearing them so applied to Mozart concertos.
Re: the Gould/Rose collaboration (or should I say capitulation on the part of Rose), I
find it some of the most ecstatic music making I have ever heard despite the alleged
"deconstruction."


Bradley P Lehman wrote:

> On Tue, 21 Apr 1998, Richard Vallis wrote:
>
> > GG doesn't just add a continuo part in this concerto.  He actually adds thematic
> > material in the left hand while the right hand is playing scalar patterns.  Listen
> > particularly near the end of the movement, before the cadenza.
>
> True, but there's nothing to say one can't add thematic material as part
> of playing continuo, and it's not a novel thing for GG to have done.  It
> goes back at least as far as early 17th-century violin works from the area
> now known as Italy; contrapuntal entries of upper voices (enough to get
> one started) are notated in the bass part.  There are also contrapuntal
> entries notated in the figures in Bach's G-major violin sonata with
> continuo (the one whose bass line is shared with another Bach piece, with
> different melody parts and figures).  And Pasquini's sonatas for dueling
> keyboards, each playing continuo against the other, have plenty of
> right-hand sketchy bits as thematic material squeezed into each player's
> single line.
>
> As Bazzana points out, GG amended some of the Mozart sonatas, too, adding
> thematic content.
>
> > If  I'm not mistaken,
> > by the way, I believe the cadenza in the Columbia recording is by Beethoven.
>
> According to the Beethoven work list at
> http://magic.hofstra.edu:7003/immortal/works.html, which includes all
> those little "wuh-oh" pieces, the only Mozart concerto he did cadenzas to
> was K.466, the d minor.  Whoever wrote the one GG used in the c minor, I
> still think it's on the weird side, especially when it gets up to the high
> notes that weren't on Mozart's pianos.  Fun but strange.  Always makes me
> laugh at its whimsy, in this otherwise basically serious concerto.  Not as
> strange as the Schnittke cadenza that Kremer recorded in the Beethoven
> violin concerto.  Not as strange as GG's cadenzas to the Beethoven first
> piano concerto.  Not even 1/10th as strange as GG's deconstructive reading
> of the Bach viola da gamba sonatas with Leonard Rose.
>
> Bradley Lehman ~ Harrisonburg VA, USA ~ 38.45716N+78.94565W
> bpl@umich.edu ~ http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bpl/