On Demand
Mozart in the Middle
By Terrance McKnight
August 4, 2008
In the middle lies mystery; the quiet essence — and Mozart knew this. In his 27 concertos for piano and orchestra, Mozart’s prowess as composer, conductor, pianist and improviser were center stage. While the outer movements of his concertos displayed the composer’s dazzling technique and improvisational skills, his inner emotions were often couched in the middle movements.
Beginning August 4th and running through the 17th, David Garland and I will be presenting the middle movements of Mozart’s 27 piano concertos on Evening Music. From dusty and eccentric recordings to wildly contrasting side-by-side takes; to jazz-infused and chamber arrangements, we’ll be indulging ourselves in this undiluted, menacing and yearning core. Two consecutive piano concerto middle movements every night for the next two weeks at 8:30pm.
Weigh in: What’s your favorite Mozartean middle movement, piano concerto or otherwise? Tell us why you love a specific recording (or recordings) and we may program them as part of the festival (with credit to you, of course).
You can view the entire planned playlist at this link.
Otherwise, got any general comments or questions about Mozart? Post them here.
Comments
Comment from Margo
Date: August 5, 2008, 4:23 pm
E-flat K.482 and E-Flat K. 271. The c-minor middle movements are divinely inspired.
Comment from abarefootboy
Date: August 5, 2008, 5:22 pm
Buddha always pointed to the Middle Path .. as being the most likely to lead one towards Enlightenment.
Comment from bob from brooklyn
Date: August 5, 2008, 10:53 pm
Why do you interrupt the Hovhaness Concerto to make public announcements (after only 20 minutes of music) and at other time play several things together without making any announcements????????
Ridiculous.
Comment from Frank De Canio
Date: August 6, 2008, 12:11 pm
The middle movement to the 23rd - I believe A minor - piano concerto has to be one of the most poignant of an impressive lot.
The potent mixture of mellifluousness and gravity is quite impressive. I recall reading that he had written it shortly after his mother died which may explain its emotional immediacy. As if Mozart needs explaining.
Comment from Jo Salas
Date: August 6, 2008, 8:32 pm
Terrance–you play gorgeous music but just about every time I listen I end up turning off the radio in frustration because you so often cut in before the final note has had its due. It’s like being in a restaurant where you can never fully enjoy the great food because the waiter snatches away your plate while you’re on your last mouthful.
Please please PLEASE give us a beat of silence when the music ends! Please!
Comment from dave
Date: August 6, 2008, 8:40 pm
Gesundheit!
Comment from Claudia Levy
Date: August 6, 2008, 10:01 pm
I enjoy your show. Who was the soprano who sang a German lied this evening around 7:40? Her first name was Liana and she was fabulous.
Thanks.
Comment from T. McKnight
Date: August 6, 2008, 10:05 pm
Juliane Banse was the soprano in Mozart’s “Evening Thoughts” - thank you
Comment from Jonah
Date: August 7, 2008, 4:32 pm
Why are we to think that the middle movements are any more emotional, or have any more of an “essence,” than the movements they are couched between?
Personally, I think it’s difficult to say that Mozart’s middle movements contain any more of an emotional “essence” than any of his others. People have multiple emotional responses to all of Mozart’s movements–”middle” and not. This seems to perpetuate the idea that quieter/slower = more emotional/personal. While I think discussing personal emotional responses to the middle movements can be interesting and fulfilling, to infer that the middle is objectively more emotional or “undiluted” is questionable to me.
What does everyone else think?
Comment from ellen
Date: August 7, 2008, 8:35 pm
Dear Margo poster #1 — you tell us k482 and 271 with their each key but what number are they? The number lets more people know which divine concerto it is. I know several k numbers, but I won’t memorize 3 different psbl ways of referring to each concerto! divine or not Thanks.
Comment from ellen
Date: August 7, 2008, 8:47 pm
One of my favs is the middle mvt of concerto no 25–hope you play it–exquisitely designed and sad but beautifully sad, not neurotic. I think middle or slow movements are designed to express quiet emotions, in a very expressive, finely wrought, fully thought out way. This is true for Beethoven, Mozart, Schubert,Bach etc. The 1st mvts, are expositions,taking various musical ideas, embroidering and contrasting them in a fairly lively mood/tempo, but still can be serious and grand. Showing virtuosity. The last movements must contrast, and give some release. So they are often happier, inventive, & can be dancable and fun.
Comment from Listener
Date: August 7, 2008, 8:52 pm
This used to be one of my favorite programs, Evening Music. I don’t have any interest in hearing other people’s comments, it’s all about the music. Blogging is an excuse for a radio host who has nothing to say that contributes value to the show. Bloggers (and I am not a blogger-just sharing my annoyance at having to listen to other people’s comments) are very self absorbed people.
Comment from Marc
Date: August 7, 2008, 9:24 pm
Dear Terrance, thank you for your critically-theoretical Maria Theresia Spiel of historical Mozart contextualization. It’s funny and a healthy dose of historio-social realism. However, people (some of whom have posted above) do not consider this as a contingent condition of musicologist hermeneutics. They are part of it, and within their framework Mozart is divine. How do you justify trying to shatter their frame of reference?
Comment from Peter
Date: August 7, 2008, 9:55 pm
I heard some of your comments earlier this evening while you were playing several pieces of music by Martinu. I’m not too familiar with his music, but I was tickled by the fact that his piano is in my living room. My father bought it from him in the late 50s.
Unfortunately, my musical skills don’t do it justice.
Comment from rgw
Date: August 7, 2008, 10:20 pm
You can’t go wrong with Aretha. This song is from one of the best albums of all time across all genres. They really nailed it
Comment from Hilary
Date: August 7, 2008, 10:22 pm
Your show is often the soundtrack to my dishwashing in the evening, and I love the unpredictability of your play lists. The gospel-y spiritual currently sweetening up my apartment is just as compelling as the Mozart played earlier. I thank you for always maintaining such a broad perspective. As a person of color, let me also add how refreshing it is to have you as a regular on WNYC.
Comment from Jonah
Date: August 8, 2008, 11:16 am
‘Listener’ - What makes you think music is beyond discussion? Music is very much part of culture, not above it. It isn’t somehow “off-limits.” Music is a social and cultural practice, and I would say our socially discussing it is very far from “self-absorbed.”
…and why are you denigrating the blog and bloggers anyway, if you really are not interested in contributing to the discussion in the first place? That seems very arrogant and self-absorbed, indeed!
Comment from richard phillips
Date: August 11, 2008, 8:00 am
What was the concerto playing just before
9 pm, Sunday, August 10?
Comment from Frank De Canio
Date: August 11, 2008, 12:01 pm
Actually, one of the most intimate pieces in all of music is the WHOLE of Mozart’s string quintet in g minor. I doubt if there is music which has a landscape that is so unrelievingly bleak. That added viola certainly doesn’t help. And that post-mortem rondo sounds more like laughter through tears than anything else. The whole quintet reminds me of a comment a music critic once said: When Mozart writes in the minor key he means it!
As for Jonah’s (#9) pertinant comment about middle=slow=poignant, well I think that the equation is true. It’s hard to brood or even to have a lump in the throat when one is jogging. I really can’t think of too many allegros that are poignant. Monumental, terrifying, yes, but poignant as in Elgar’s enigmatic Nimrod variation or Satie’s gnossiennes or the adagio that leads to the Beethoven’s 9th finale? It would be difficult to give a funeral oration, express ardent love or ven to pray talking rapidly and still sound convincing.
Frank
Comment from steve kaufman
Date: August 11, 2008, 9:59 pm
Thanks for playing Arvo Part. A true joy, please play more when you can….
Been in love w. this music for years now, and now w. the advent of YOUTUBE, our latest favorite toy, much more is revealed. Aficiandos should check out the many film clips of him playing/conducting/supervising performances of his music. Not too mention the kooky video of him being interviewed by Bjork.
Comment from linda lees
Date: August 12, 2008, 5:35 pm
Tried to find the link to Talk to Terrance. So far, no good, but maybe this will work. Just want to say that your offerings of “new music”, at least to this almost 89-year older who has listened to WNYC for at least 75 years, is very much appreciated. While some of it sounds unappealing, I do believe we should be exposed to it all. Who knows, there just might be another “Mozart” somewhere in the mix.
Linda
Comment from Tom, Cooper Sq.
Date: August 12, 2008, 8:10 pm
What a perfect balanced interview you’ve done with Kaija Saariaho. One has to admire her aggressive dispassion and her imaginative perseverance. She utterly and pointedly refused to take up the question of “passion” in narrow comparisons. Passion means need. A need that rises to the level of such concentrated purity, undistracted by anything else becomes the agon-ecstasy. Every person who has ever lived has such passion at some times, it is at the tender core of what it is to be engaged in living. Few, of course have their passion retold by our culture. In this way we heard that Kaija Saariaho’s nimble MIRAGE has the exact quaver of this very thing, the sublime tolerance of inconceivability, inflected with the desires of identity. Perhaps, when it fits the needs of the program, more of the Spectralists could be (in interview or on the future playlist) presented. Thanks, Terrance! Ciao, T.
Comment from Michael Steger
Date: August 12, 2008, 10:56 pm
Really enjoyed that interview with Kaija Saariaho earlier tonight. There was something about the lucid way she spoke about her work, and opera and music in general, that to my mind compels admiration. I have a nine-year-old daughter who says she hears full-blown symphonies when she lies down to sleep at night, and I think she would completely understand Ms. Saariaho’s story about hearing music “emanating” from her pillow. I appreciated the short but clear explanation of spectral music. Thank you, and thank WNYC.
Comment from Barbara Pollack
Date: August 15, 2008, 12:03 pm
I’ve counted on Evening Music as being a continuous flow of musical compositions in their complete versions. WNYC for many years was the radio station that gave me musical listening satisfaction. But your programming does not follow that plan. There are too many interruptions.
I do like some of your explanations but not the mix of music you present. Your voice is good. but give us more music.
I agree with the comment that stated that you cut of the last note, and also cut in with comments that may have nothing to do with the music.
My life goes back to the beginning of the station — 85 years. Some changes have been worthwhile–others are not good. The program, New Sounds, at 11 covers what we need to hear on the new sounds.
I hope you will not feel you have to “popularize” this program and lessen the feel of classical music.
I don’t stay up all night, where WNYC plays complete compositions. That’s perfect, but I do need some sleep.
Comment from Russell Bittner
Date: August 15, 2008, 8:47 pm
There is, in my opinion, no way (and no RIGHT) to improve upon the classical interpretation of the Adagio movement of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23 in A, KV 488.
Chick Corea does a credible job. Jacques Loussier does not.
Russell
Comment from Brad Cresswell
Date: August 15, 2008, 8:59 pm
I’d agree that no one is going to “better” Mozart by dressing it up in jazz - but sometimes it can enhance appreciation to hear a “cover” version if you will. And if it falls flat, it still demonstrates one thing if nothing else: that Mozart’s indestructible
Comment from lost train
Date: August 17, 2008, 9:23 pm
I greatly enjoyed the ‘Mozart in the Middle’ series. It was a real help to me. From my perspective as an unseasoned listener, it made Mozart more accessible. The middle movements are so beautiful whereas I find the more up tempo movements harder to listen to - or at least to absorb - my mind drifts and they tend to become like pretty sonic wallpaper.
Comment from bob from brooklyn
Date: August 17, 2008, 10:16 pm
These works should be played whole. (I don’t care for Mozart)
However, Terrance McKnight, you did a great job in picking the Harry Somers and the Morton Gould works.
Keep up the good work!!!
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