Piano Concerto No. 20 in D Minor

Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 20, composed near the beginning of 1785 and first performed at the Mehlgrube Casino in Vienna on 11 February, is his 10th such work for his subscription concerts after settling in that city as a freelance composer. It was his first of only two piano concertos in a minor key, and Mozart emphasises this aspect from the outset of the “Allegro”, whose orchestral introduction lurches forward in tense anxiety. This mood continues with the soloist’s questioning entry, and though the subsidiary theme lightens the mood, it has relatively little bearing on the course of this movement. Mozart left no cadenzas here or for the finale, but in the early 1790s Beethoven supplied his own, which are often revived today. The “Romanze” brings a degree of solace with its ingratiating melody, and if the stormy contrasting episode disrupts the previous calm, the music regains its poise toward the close. The “Allegro assai” plunges back into D minor with its headlong main theme, which the secondary idea counters in its deft irony. But it is only with the coda that Mozart heads into D major to close in unalloyed optimism—establishing a template for the finale of minor-key concertos throughout the 19th century.