wmozart: K. 466 Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor,

Friday, February 6, 2015

K. 466 Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor,

The Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor, K. 466, was written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in 1785. The first performance took place at the Mehlgrube Casino in Vienna on February 11, 1785, with the composer as the soloist. A few days after the first performance, the composer's father, Leopold, visiting in Vienna, wrote to his daughter Nannerl about her brother's recent success: "[I heard] an excellent new piano concerto by Wolfgang, on which the copyist was still at work when we got there, and your brother didn't even have time to play through the rondo because he had to oversee the copying operation." It is written in the key of D minor. Other works by the composer in that key include the Fantasia K. 397 for piano, Requiem, a Kyrie, the aria "Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen" from the opera The Magic Flute and parts of the opera Don Giovanni. It is the first of two piano concertos written in a minor key (No. 24 in C minor being the other). The young Ludwig van Beethoven admired this concerto and kept it in his repertoire. A bass run from the first movement appears for comic effect in Variation 22 of the Diabelli Variations. Daniel Barenboim contends that this concerto was Joseph Stalin's favorite piece of music. Composers who wrote cadenzas for it include Beethoven (WoO 58), Charles-Valentin Alkan, Johannes Brahms (WoO 16), Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Feruccio Busoni and Clara Schumann.