Talk:Piano Concerto No. 26 (Mozart)

I think that this piano concerto is among Mozart's finest. I also agree with the article saying that it is very like Mozart. I've heard this a few times before, and I never grow tired of it.

It is indeed very like Mozart in some ways. The shape of the themes are very Mozartian. But it does not feel to me like the other Mozart piano concertos where the themes also to some extent shape the form of what is going to happen, and the harmonic structure of the movement is the master. This almost feels like the two Chopin concertos (or the first three Beethoven ones), with an orchestral exposition that stands on its own and is wholly separate from the solo exposition (which then feels like a repeat). The themes feel as though they have been coldly shoved into the necessary form as a result, with obligatory transitions that just mark time (see especially the orchestral exposition to the first movement). (Yes, I've been reading Rosen's The Classical Style recently. But I always felt that something wasn't quite right about this concerto compared to the others by Mozart.) Even in the slow movement, though we for once get a break from the ornamentation that desperately tries to enliven the cadences in the outer movements (since the forced-in material is just not going to do it), I find the theme's contour gets a little boring due to the constant repetition of the E-A fourth. Every scrap of this concerto is brilliantly Mozartian, but stuck together in a post-classical manner that does not seem Mozartean at all. A very interesting experiment, but given that Mozart did not try this again, I get the impression that he did not think it was a success, unlike the later Romantic generation. Double sharp (talk) 06:07, 28 February 2016 (UTC)