This is my favourite Mozart Piano Concerto, and my favourite recording of it, however many times i've listened to this work, this was still a powerful revelation today, like hearing the work anew, it's truly quite revolutionary, and it's also in my favourite key [D Minor], one in mind.
Mitsuko Uchida is Japanese, she's now 63, and she made this recording fairy early in her career in 1985, she did a full cycle of Mozart Concerto's with Jeffrey Tate, and also she's started to record a second cycle, with her conducting from the keyboard too, the front cover for this booklet [by Walter Schels] is fairly ordinary, Uchida and Tate discussing a score, she's got a weird expression on her face, furrowed brow, and that Yoko Ono hair!.
Wow what an experience, it was the first movement that really got to me, what a genius of a creation, usually Mozart's a fairly 'happy' Composer, he's the jangly Pop of the Classical world, but here he delves into a world of some dissonance and jarring, the very opening of the Concerto is a stroke of genius, maybe not quite a revolutionary as Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, but here's a real statement of intent from Mozart, dark and brooding strings becoming more and more restless / frantic [0:00-0:31] until the brass explode in anger [0:31+], it sets the scene perfectly, the introduction lasts two and a half minutes [0:00-2:26], and then the piano comes in, solo and sweet at first [2:26-2:52],
Here's Uchida conducting and playing the first movement on YouTube.
