Concerto No. 10 in E-flat Major for Two Pianos, K. 365
Allegro
Andante
Rondeau: Allegro
For two pianos with 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns and strings
[Added for later Vienna performances: 2 clarinets, 2 trumpets and timpani]
Program Notes by Martin Pearlman
Mozart composed his only concerto for two pianos in Salzburg about the same time as another great double concerto, his Sinfonia Concertante for violin and viola. While the exact date is not known, it is generally accepted that he wrote the work in the late 1770's for himself to play together with his sister Nannerl. However, there is no definite record of the two of them performing it.
In 1781 and 1782, as the young composer was trying to establish his reputation in Vienna, he chose this concerto among others to represent some of his best work. To make a more brilliant impression in those Vienna performances, he appears to have enlarged the orchestra, adding clarinets, trumpets and timpani. The concerto is often heard with that orchestration today, but since the added instruments do not appear in either Mozart's autograph score or the earliest printed editions, it has never been proven that those additions are in fact by Mozart.
Performing with him in Vienna was his student Josepha Auernhammer, with whom he had performed his sonata for piano four hands and to whom he dedicated some of his violin sonatas. In his letters, Mozart seems ambivalent about her playing: "[She] plays enchantingly, though in cantabile playing she has not got the true delicate singing style. She clips everything . . ." He was far less charitable about her appearance, and rumors that the two of them were to be married infuriated Mozart, although they were soon ended by his marriage to Constanze Weber.
Boston Baroque Performances
Concerto No. 10 in E-flat Major for Two Pianos
March 2 & 3, 2012
NEC’s Jordan Hall, Boston, MA
Martin Pearlman, conductor
Soloists:
Robert Levin, piano
Ya-Fei Chuang, piano
March 16, 1996
NEC’s Jordan Hall, Boston, MA
Martin Pearlman, conductor
Soloists:
John Gibbons, piano
Robert Levin, piano