Welcome to the Mozart K.488 Project
Co-designed by Neal Peres Da Costa and the Australian Romantic & Classical Orchestra, the Mozart K.488 Project culminated in a recording of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No.23 in A Major, K.488 that took place on 25–27 August 2022 in All Saints Church, Hunters Hill, NSW.
Recording details
Recording Producer and Editor: Thomas Grubb Mano Musica Pty Ltd
Recording Assistance: Patrick Mullins AudioFile Pty Ltd
Fortepiano Tuning and Maintenance: Nathan Cox
Fortepiano
Viennese-action fortepiano made by Paul McNulty, Divišov, Czech Republic, 2022 after Anton Walter & Sohn c.1805, kindly provided by Sydney Conservatorium of Music, University of Sydney.
Project Gestation
The project started its life in 2017 when Neal Peres Da Costa presented a paper at the Symposium Rund um Beethoven: Interpretationsforschung heute at the Bern University of the Arts in Switzerland.
After that Symposium presentation, Neal was invited to submit a chapter for an edited book on the subject of the German pianist Carl Reinecke (1824–1910) who recorded his own arrangement of the second movement from Mozart’s K.488 onto a reproducing piano roll for the Hupfeld company in Leipzig (c. 1904). His arrangement was published as Andante aus dem Klavierconcert KV 488, arr. Reinecke (Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1896), reissued (Leipzig: Reinecke Musikverlag).
Following this, Neal was invited to two events as part of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK) funded Transforming 19th-Century HIP project: i) a Summer Chamber Music Course in 2017 during which he presented a lecture recital including emulations of Reinecke’s performances; and ii) a paper entitled “Performing Mozart in the long nineteenth century: Carl Reinecke and the Leipzig Mozart style” at the 2018 conference Perspectives on Historically Informed Practices in Music.
The 5-year AHRC research project Transforming C19th HIP aims to bring world-leading scholars and performers together with the aim of providing professional players with new insights into historically evidenced expression, and a deeper understanding of the aesthetic context of the period. Much valuable scholarship on the performance practices of the 19th century already exists; but researchers have been critical of professional ‘period’ instrument performers, claiming that many supposedly historically informed performances of 19th-century repertoire currently reflect little of what is known about historical style. Although many period ensembles perform 19th-century repertoire, specialist conservatoire training still remains focused on teaching Baroque and Early-Classical performance practices. The TCHIP Summer Chamber Music Course responds to a number of requests by offering a 19th-century historical performance chamber music course for professionals and conservatoire post-graduates.
Credit: University of Oxford
Research Translation
In 2021, the Australian Romantic & Classical Orchestra and Neal were invited to perform K. 488 in two concerts at the Canberra International Music Festival. Neal used Reinecke’s K.488 performance as a model for his interpretation. Reinecke’s style of playing Mozart was lauded throughout the 19th century as belonging to an old school, elements of which are likely to have reflected the practices of Mozart and his era—it is significant that in Reinecke’s formative years of training, the memory of Mozart’s performance style was still in the ether. These practice elements included manual asynchrony (playing melody note apart from the accompaniment), chordal arpeggiation, modifications of rhythm and tempo and ornamentation. These are explored in Neal’s monograph Off the Record: Performing Practices in Romantic Piano Playing (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012) as well as his more recent book chapter, available online.
Canberra International Music Festival, 2021: Australian Romantic & Classical Orchestra, directed by Rachael Beesley, with Neal Peres Da Costa, Fortepiano.
“But this was to be [Peres] Da Costa’s moment in the sun. As he had explained in the elaborate concert notes printed in the CIMF program, the jury is still out on the question “what exactly did Mozart play as compared with what he wrote down?”
“In his [program] notes, [Peres] Da Costa turns to 19th century Mozart authority Carl Reinecke for some of the answers, but in his own full-bodied, ripping performance, he demonstrated that virtuosic elaborations are still possible, even in this era of fidelity to formal notation.
City News (Canberra), 2 May 2021
Praise for Reinecke
● Highly respected by Mendelssohn, Schumann, Liszt and many others
● [Reinecke] “is thoroughly conversant with the best traditions of Mozart playing, which through the persistent neglect of present-day players are in danger of being lost.” Monthly Musical Record (July 1, 1893), p. 152
● “the greatest and most conscientious performer of Mozart ” still alive …There were “high hopes that his complete Mozart Piano Sonata roll project for the Aeolian company would help preserve for the future “the style of the famous Leipzig Mozart-Player.” Zeitschrift für Instrumentenbau (Leipzig: 24 (1903/04)) p. 1039
● “[Reinecke] belonged to a school now almost extinct. Grace and neatness were its characteristics, and at one time Reinecke was probably unrivalled as a Mozart player and an accompanist .” [Donald Francis Tovey] Encyclopædia Britannica, 11th edn. (1910/11), vol. 23, p. 56
● “He [Reinecke] is not merely an admirably sympathetic accompanist, but a most highly accomplished pianist of the older school – a school unaffected by the pyrotechnics of a generation that is now in its turn passing away. To have heard one of Mozart’s concertos played by Reinecke is a memorable experience in the lives of such musicians as are sufficiently trained to appreciate the consummate delicacy and artistic skill which the performance exhibits.” John Alexander Fuller Maitland: Masters of German Music (London: 1894), p. 206
Fortepiano Acquisition for the Sydney Conservatorium of Music
The next stage of the project was the acquisition of a suitable fortepiano that could be used to make this recording but was also needed to fill a gap in the Sydney Conservatorium of Music’s Historical Keyboard Collection.
In late 2021, Neal applied to the University of Sydney Equipment Grant fund and was successful. This led to the purchase of the beautiful Viennese-action fortepiano made by Paul McNulty, Divišov, Czech Republic, 2022 after Anton Walter & Sohn c.1805, used on this recording.
Tempestuous Skies, 2022
Further research and co-design led to six performances of K.488 in the Australian Romantic & Classical Orchestra’s national concert series in 2022, Tempestuous Skies.
Tempestuous Skies in Canberra, August 2022. Photo by Peter Hislop.
“Neal Peres Da Costa’s Historically Informed Performance experience and research brought so many new options and approaches to this slow movement and in the rest of the well-known concerto. The intimate voice of the fortepiano was imbued with arpeggiation, embellishment of line and extra material to push the sound through the fortepiano’s quicker fade in tone.”
Sydney Arts Guide 30 August 2022
For this concert series, Neal used previous research with new experimentation combining Reinecke’s style with a set of ornaments for the slow movement of K.488 written by Mozart’s student Barbara Ployer:
“A manuscript of Mozart's Piano Concerto No 23 with an explosion of unfamiliar extra notes has suggested to a researcher that the piece was written for and performed by one of the composer's favourite pupils.
Research by the pianist and music historian Robert Levin […] has suggested the manuscript is a more faithful impression of how Mozart would have performed such pieces.
The extra section was written so Mozart's favourite pupil, Barbara Ployer, could perform it, and the manuscript includes further notes in her handwriting. Mozart himself would have improvised the embellishment in performance.” (Maev Kennedy, “Embellished Mozart manuscript uncovered,” The Guardian, 1 October, 2011)
“Prof. Dr. C. Reinecke, helped the Viennese in a very essential way to celebrate their Mozart artistically. It seems that he is currently [1896] the only pianist who, equipped with historical knowledge, can reproduce Mozart's works as they might have sounded 110 or 120 years ago.” (Heinrich Schenker, “Zur Mozartfeier”, Die Zeit, 1896.)
Ployer’s ornaments in W. A. Mozart, Kritische Berichte, Serie 5: Konzerte, Band 7, Hermann Beck, p. 10.
Results of Research Translation
The result of this work is something quite new in Mozart performance: an expressive style that moves beyond the score-bound style that is customary for Mozart’s music. Neal applied his knowledge of Reinecke’s Mozart style (also evident on other of his and his contemporaries’ recordings) to the outer movements of K. 488. And during the rehearsal period the Australian Romantic & Classical Orchestra practitioners were encouraged to experiment with a more flexible approach to rhythm (heard particularly in some of the wind solos) and tempo, to enhance the different characters in the music. This is in line with recorded and documentary evidence of instrumentalists and instrumental ensembles. This is a work in progress, and we hope to develop future projects that further experiment with and embed this style, to advance classical music industry transformation.
“The project [Tempestuous Skies …] was one of the best, if not the best experience of my life in terms of engagement with historical practices, creativity, freedom, and space to explore expression. I especially appreciated that experimentation was encouraged throughout the project and that risk taking was at a maximum” (Australian Romantic & Classical Orchestra practitioner survey).
We hope you enjoy our collaborative experimentation with Mozart’s Piano Concerto No.23 in A Major, K.488.
Australian Romantic & Classical Orchestra musicians featured on the recording:
Rachael Beesley | Director
Neal Peres Da Costa | Fortepiano
Violin 1
Rachael Beesley
Miki Tsunoda
Julia Russoniello
Emma Williams
Matthew Bruce
Frances The
Violin 2
Peter Clark
Jessica Oddie
Marlane Bennie
Viola
Karina Schmitz
John Ma
Darrin McCann
Cello
Daniel Yeadon
James Bush
Double Bass
Chloe Ann Williamson
Flute
Kate Clark
Clarinet
Nicole van Bruggen
Craig Hill
Bassoon
Jane Gower
Jackie Newcomb
Horn
Anneke Scott
Doree Dixon
REVIEWS & FEEDBACK
“I have had my morning derailed by your Mozart A major concerto […] I had to stop everything and listen. It's wonderful playing, so thoughtful and so free; and the preludey transition to the slow movement is breathtaking […] I think I listen to those Mozart concertos more often than any other single body or repertoire […] I know this music very well and you just made me hear the A major as though for the first time again.”
Andrew Ford, composer & broadcaster
“This is simply outstanding! It just makes so much sense – from the fortepiano to the ornamentation - even to some of the 'swung' sets of quavers in the woodwind. It also makes the music much more interesting. Less '‘pretty’, more engaging. As a composer – I agree that Mozart would like it to be like this.”
Matthew Hindson AM, composer; Deputy Head of School, Deputy Dean, Associate Dean (Education), Sydney Conservatorium of Music, The University of Sydney
“As an improviser and lover of classical and the old piano roll performances, I find this refreshing and overdue. It is amazing that our society has pushed down this musical expression for almost one hundred years. Thanks for bringing the jazz sensibility of artistic expression and freedom in music to Mozart and beyond. Classical music needs a revival. Jazz will always be safe thanks to the fresh approach day to day, moment to moment.”
Matthew Dennett - Jazz pianist, accordionist, improviser, composer, and educator, Canberra
“…your recording is absolutely beautiful and with so many interesting and pertinent elements, that it could come only from such an expert like you … I wish it would become a reference for Mozart piano concertos. I will use it in my performance practice class in Japan.”
Giuseppe Marriotti, Professor of Piano and Dean of Music Faculty of the Tokushima Bunri University, Japan
“I find the performance [of K. 488] absolutely WONDERFUL. I feel very touched (and also proud of us) listening to all the many magnificent details. And I found the freedoms we took make it an extremely compelling ride, that at the same time loses no unity or integrity of musical ideas. I also find the sound of the piano and all sections of the orchestra sounding richly coloured and balanced - really a joy to behold.”
Kate Clarke, historical flute specialist, Professor of Historical Flutes Royal Conservatorium in The Hague, Netherlands
I just wanted to say how wonderful your K488 recording is. I played it to my MA students today as an example of what can be achieved through the study of early recordings (not to reduce it only to that, but that was the focus of the lecture). You could have heard a pin drop. 'Magic' was the response. We were all very inspired. For me, it's totally convincing as a Mozart performance - the way that the expansion of the lines wrings so much sound out of what we think of as a 'quiet' instrument, making the orchestral textures work, etc etc. Really, congratulations and I can't wait to hear what's next!
Dr Emily Worthington BA MMus DPhil FHEA
Lecturer in Music (Historical Performance Practices), University of York
This project was supported by Australian Research Council Discovery Project DP170101976 Deciphering 19th-century pianism: Invigorating global practices, which sought to reignite artistic practice through innovative methods: i. early (historical) recording emulation; ii. experimental application of documentary evidence; and iii) period instrument performance.