Composer/pianist Timo Andres and The Knights orchestra performed his re-composition of Mozart's "Coronation" Concerto in NYC's Central Park on Tuesday. The New York Times says Andres's left-hand completion of Mozart's work "felt necessary—not a lark but a surprisingly moving dazzler." Andres's cadenzas "were masterly—the one at the end of the third movement receded to daring delicacy and expansiveness—and the slow central movement ached with nostalgia for a softer past while embracing the angularity of the present."
Composer and pianist Timo Andres joined the New York–based orchestra The Knights to perform his re-composition of Mozart's "Coronation" Concerto at the Naumburg Bandshell in New York's Central Park Tuesday evening. The piece, heard on Andres's 2013 Nonesuch album Home Stretch, is Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 26 in D, "Coronation," with Andres's completion of the left-hand solo part Mozart had left unwritten.
The New York Times's Zachary Woolfe opens his review of the concert by first wondering whether such a re-composition is necessary, only to answer in the affirmative, noting that after the concert, the piece "felt necessary—not a lark but a surprisingly moving dazzler."
Andres has created a completion "with a distinctive and, I think, valid definition of 'Mozart’s own style,'" says Woolfe. "Wouldn’t the endlessly creative, notoriously playful Mozart want his concerto finished in a way that looks to the future, much in the way that even the unfinished score anticipates the seething virtuosity of Romanticism?"
Woolfe later describes Andres's cadenzas as "masterly—the one at the end of the third movement receded to daring delicacy and expansiveness—and the slow central movement ached with nostalgia for a softer past while embracing the angularity of the present."
Read the complete concert review at nytimes.com.
On his album Home Stretch, Andres pairs the Mozart re-composition with the newly composed title work and another reinvention, his Paraphrase on Themes of Brian Eno. Metropolis Ensemble chamber orchestra performs with the composer on piano. The album, says NPR, offers "thought-provoking glimpses into how the past and the present merge in classical music today." To pick up a copy, head to iTunes or the Nonesuch Store, where CD orders include a download of the complete album at checkout; MP3 and FLAC lossless files are also available to purchase.
Timo Andres joins the Philip Glass Ensemble and Steve Reich and Musicians for celebrations of Nonesuch Records' 50th anniversary at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), Nonesuch Records at BAM, this September. For details, visit bam.org.
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