Past events listed in the Cornucopia arts diary
When, in 1785, the publisher Franz Anton Hoffmeister commissioned Mozart to write three piano quartets, he did not know what he was letting himself in for. What he presumably expected were some amiable drawing room pieces *a la* J. C. Bach or Schobert; what he got was the first great piano quartet ever composed, *and* in G minor, a key Mozart never used lightly. When the Viennese public objected that the piece was ‘too difficult’, Mozart generously released Hoffmeister from his contract; yet he did compose a more equable, if not less difficult, companion piece in E flat the following year, which was subsequently issued by another Viennese publisher, Artaria. ... The two works ... display a masterly fusion of *concertante* keyboard writing and the purest chamber music style ... .
Recital by Ferhat Can Büyük, who in 2020 won first prize in the solo piano category of the ‘Musica Classica’ Festival in Moscow.
Issue 67, December 2024
Beauty in the Wilderness
