Re: Which cadenza for Mozart K 491?

[Bradley Lehman <bpl@UMICH.EDU>]

At 02:07 PM 10/1/2003 -0400, Giorgio Pagannone wrote:
> Joseph Kerman has written: "the display of the solo in the cadenza [of the
> first movement of K 491] is invested of a weight and a pathos most special.
> In no other first movement of concerto the cadenza has so much importance as
> in K 491".
> (...)
> Now, except Gould, I listened only short cadenzas, well made but in my
> opinion insufficient (I know Serkin, Perahia, Haebler, Zacharias, and also
> Brahms, of which I have the score).
> (...)
> What's your opinion about this topic?
> There are other cadenzas worthy to be mentioned?


Gould's cadenza goes off the top of all Mozart's pianos.  That's not
necessarily a problem, just an observation.  Players are not bound to use
only the notes that were available to the composer....  (The thing that
bothers me more is the blatant splice at the end of it, after his
trill...that could have been smoother in the production.)

Gould played the same cadenza in the 1958 live recording with the Swedish
Radio Sym. (cond. by G L Jochum).

Curzon's (with Kertesz) isn't identified.

Ditto for John Gibbons with Bruggen; presumably his own.  It has some
exciting dramatic runs in octaves (one note per hand).

Bilson played his own.

Piotr Anderszewski also plays one of his own:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00005RFS9
But I really hate what he did (or, more accurately, failed to do) in the
bars before the cadenza: he just played Mozart's sketched "bong, ping,
bong, ping" literally, refusing to flesh it out to passage-work.

Brendel played his own in the recording with Marriner.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000004194

Is there anywhere on the web to listen to Gould's untransmitted radio talk
about this piece?  It's mentioned in the last paragraph of Stegemann's
notes in the CD booklet.


Bradley Lehman, Dayton VA
home: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bpl