Vers le style d’exécution « mainstream » des concertos pour piano de Mozart: l’enregistrement Columbia du Concerto en Sol majeur, K. 453, par Ernst von Dohnányi

Abstract

The gramophone recording of Mozart’s Piano Concerto in G major, K. 453, featuring Ernst von Dohnányi as soloist and conductor of the Budapest Philharmonic Orchestra, made in 1928 for the Columbia Company, is important in many respects. The Hungarian pianist and composer made little more than a handful of gramophone recordings until the late 1940s. This performance is also the first audio recording ever to be published that contained a Mozart piano concerto (some piano rolls with concertos or extracts did exist beforehand). From the beginning of his career, Dohnányi had been one of the keenest promoters of the Austrian composer’s piano pieces. In the Columbia recording, the performing style of Dohnányi and his orchestra is characteristic of its time, notably because it chooses to use a flexible tempo. In addition, the soloist makes use of rubato and chord dislocation. Nonetheless, the performers are also playing in an intimate conversational tone and they emphasize Mozart’s structural clarity. The execution of themes by the pianist is both poetic and restrained. These traits will define the “mainstream” performing style of Mozart’s piano concertos over most of the twentieth century. An implicit aesthetic standard comes into force in the critical reviews of the Columbia records: Mozart’s piano concertos require lightness and gentleness from the soloist. The elements given prominence to the recording and in the reviews also appear in contemporary musicological literature and in texts on music. Recordings of two additional Mozart piano concertos (K. 271 and K. 503), played live by Dohnányi in the 1950s, display a broadly similar performing style. Over the ten years that followed the Columbia recording, the majority of Mozart’s “great” piano concertos were published on records. This newly found popular interest is connected with a positive re-evaluation of this group of Mozart’s works.