Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 24 – live with Martin James Bartlett and the London Mozart Players

Pianist Martin James Bartlett and the London Mozart Players perform Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 24 in C Minor, K491 at St John’s Smith Square, London on 14th June 2018. The orchestration for this concerto is unusually full. It comprises, apart from the usual string and wind complement for such concertos, clarinets, trumpets and timpani. The overall mood is, as in most of Mozart’s compositions, established in the first few bars. The sombre key of C minor determines the character of the Allegro and seems never far away in the many, more gentle interludes in major keys. Even the Larghetto with its serene melody in E flat major has an important episode in C minor, and the variations of the finale in the same dark key seem to contradict the indication Allegretto (which does not appear in the original score). This last movement is thus traditionally in the tonality of the first movement, but it differs from Mozart’s only other concerto in the minor (K466 which finished in the major) in that it also ends in t