Academy of Ancient Music has today (23 June) released the second new album in the revival of its long-running Mozart Piano Concertos series. Mozart: Piano Concertos No. 5 & Church Sonata No. 17 features two of Mozart’s works performed on the 18th-century and recently restored organ of Christ’s Chapel, Dulwich, together with extensive and specially commissioned booklet notes about the fascinating history of the works on this album.
Also featured in this 10th volume of the series, which began in the early 1990s and was paused for 20 years until 2023, is the concerto movement in G major from Nannerl’s Music Book, probably by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart as a child, and his earliest piano concerto.
It is widely accepted that Mozart would have improvised much of his solo keyboard parts in performance (the manuscript scores can be quite sketchy) and Levin is the leading exponent in recreating the Mozart style on the spot. Throw in expressive playing from the AAM and these performances have plenty of character, the C Major bright and spirited, the dark C Minor foreshadowing the Romantic era. The remaining four discs are eagerly awaited.
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AAM’s founder Christopher Hogwood and the scholar-pianist Robert Levin came together in 1993 to record Mozart’s complete works for keyboard and orchestra for the first time ever on period instruments. Levin’s interpretation restored improvisation to its rightful place at the heart of each composition. All concertos were recorded with improvised cadenzas, and decorative ornamentation was applied throughout, recreating the approach Mozart would have taken.
Over the course of seven years, Levin and AAM produced eight albums in this style, featuring 17 of Mozart’s concertos, a body of work hailed by the Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Historical Performance as ‘the historical performance movement at its absolute zenith’.
Now more than 20 years since the last release, AAM and Robert Levin are finally completing the cycle with new recordings made over the course of 2021–22. Five albums remain, featuring not only the numbered concertos, but also lesser- known works for keyboard and orchestra, as well as a new discovery and completed fragments.
The cycle of Mozart piano concertos, begun in 1993 with AAM and Christopher Hogwood, is central to my identity as an artist. This was the first cycle to restore the practices of improvisation throughout the concerto, particularly in decoration and cadenzas.
Robert Levin (series soloist)
This second release is now available to stream, download and buy on CD, while the final three albums will be released later this year and in 2024.