Pianist Jeremy Denk is joined by the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra for two Mozart concertos—No. 25 in C Major, K. 503 and No. 20 in D minor, K. 466—bookending the composer’s solo Rondo in A minor, K 511. Denk says of K. 503 in his liner notes: “As I write these words … the world as it used to be has vanished, a pandemic world has settled in, and—as we keep telling ourselves—we have to live with uncertainty. Which has always seemed to me one of the key messages of this great concerto, so different from the rest, and so full of the love of its creator.” Denk says the D minor Concerto is “a far more famous and popular piece than 503, partly because it is what it promises to be. If 503 proposes grand, certain chords and then undermines them, 466 takes the opposite approach: it starts from a distilled unease which accumulates into chords and statements, outbursts of anger. A purer tragedy—and a clearer narrative.”
Mozart: Piano Concertos – Jeremy Denk, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra
