Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos. 9 & 22

“One of the biggest challenges—and also the most rewarding aspects—of Mozart’s music is that we have always to find beauty and purpose and sense in every note,” Jan Liseicki tells Apple Music Classical. “We cannot simply rely upon sheer volume and virtuosity, or simply the effect of playing lots of notes to get us by. So we have to focus on what we have.” The Canadian pianist’s attention to detail and nuance is crystal clear in his eloquent interpretations of Mozart’s Piano Concertos Nos 9 and 22, the first written in the month of its composer’s 21st birthday, the second a radiant work created in Vienna eight years later. Both begin and end in the key of E-flat major, feature contemplative minor-key slow movements and share many other points in common, the piano’s singing line chief among them. “Mozart was an operatic composer, and that’s very evident in his concertos,” notes Lisiecki. “He wrote for the piano as if it was a voice and the pianist was a singer. And certain instruments in the orchestra take the same role.” Lisiecki points to the parts for flute and clarinets in No. 22, the latter making their first appearance in one of Mozart’s piano concertos. “There’s always this element of dialogue between us.” It’s there, too, in the impassioned exchanges between piano and strings in the slow movement of No. 9. “I think that’s one of the most important aspects of these concertos, and one that I have to be quite flexible with because every conductor will have a very different idea of how to do it. As long as they have an idea, then I can adjust to it. That can be inspiring, it can be engaging. Not all will I agree with, not all will I enjoy and embrace.” So Lisiecki was thrilled to discover a kindred spirit in Manfred Honeck. “When we met and played Mozart for the first time together, I felt immediately that there was a particular sense of style, a care for the music, and that we also had something in common with it.” After working together with several different orchestras, the opportunity arose for pianist and conductor to spend a week recording Mozart’s E-flat major concertos with the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra in their Bavarian hometown. “I’m super, super happy with how it turned out,” says Lisiecki. In addition to the collective attention paid to matters of phrasing, dynamics and expression, the album conveys a strong sense of spontaneity, and contains an ear-catching variety of orchestral textures. Listen, for instance, to how the full string section gives way to a string quintet in the slow minuet that interrupts the lively last movement of Piano Concerto No. 22. The middle movements of both works have a similar quality of chamber music-making about them. Lisiecki here develops a singing line from a piano part that often comprises little more than a solo melody or a right-hand tune supported by a simple left-hand accompaniment. “When I’m playing long melodic notes on piano, I can’t add vibrato like a singer might, I cannot sustain the sound, I cannot give a note any more shape once it’s started,” he observes. “The focus required to create an expressive phrasing is tremendous. And for that reason, when it works well, it’s very rewarding.” Jan Lisiecki was only in his mid-teens when he made his first Mozart album: a coupling of the Piano Concertos Nos 20 and 21. How has his approach to the composer evolved in the 15 years since? “I would hope that my approach, other than being shaped by experience, would not have changed so much,” he replies. “I simply let the music speak for itself, without overanalysing, without overthinking. That was one of the things that made this experience with Maestro Honeck incredible. When he explains something to the orchestra—a particular phrasing, a grouping of notes, a diminuendo—it seems to me entirely obvious because that’s the way I play it, and that’s the way I understand it. It’s a very rewarding experience when you work with musicians like these who get it and understand things in a way that feels entirely natural.”