Franz Xavier Mozart: Piano concerto no 2

Day 212

Franz Xavier Mozart: Piano concerto no 2 in E flat op 25

Henri Sigfirdsson

Lemberg Symphony Orchestra

Gunhard Mattes

I didn’t realise until quite recently that Mozart’s youngest son was a composer in his own right. He never knew his father as he was born only a few months before his father died. He was reasonably well known in early-romantic musical circles, for example he knew Schumann and Schubert and he was one of the many composer chosen by Diabelli to write a variation on his waltz theme. Whether this fame was due to his own talent as a composer or his parentage is a matter of debate.

This, the second of the composer’s two piano concerti, was an interesting piece. If I had heard it cold I might have through that is was an early world of Beethoven, particularly in the outer movements. The slow movement was more forward looking, with suggestions of the sort of fioratura which is probably derived from Hummel and which ultimately was full developed by Chopin.

There was certainly some attractive music here but also some fairly dull patches where the composer seems to get stuck into passage work that didn’t go anywhere. The melodic inspiration was patchy - some really lovely moments in the slow movement but elsewhere promising starts to tunes rather petered out into trivia.

I’m glad to have heard this and it was a more accomplished piece that I feared it might be. F X Mozart clearly had a real musical ability - but the piece does show up the difference between talent and genius.