Piano Concerto No.25 & No 26 (with Beethoven - Piano Sonata No.22 in F, Op.54)

∆ when first prizes at such events were rare and carried a beguiling cachet. A fluent and acute exponent of the great Viennese masters ∆ Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert ∆ he was no less remarkable in Chopin and in the major works of Debussy and Ravel.

An early crossover artist he became obsessed with jazz ∆ albeit with a classical bias ∆ and played at New York's Birdland club into the small hours after a lengthy all-Beethoven programme at Carnegie Hall, earning the nickname 'Dead Eye Fred.' A sophisticate with a difference he later denounced classical music as 'fodder for museums', pronouncing jazz to be a truer mirror of contemporary life (an attitude fuelled by the snobbery and ignorance he saw as central to the classical music world).
Angry and bemused by reaction to his edicts, he retaliated by appearing on stage strangely attired and sometimes nude. At one Queen Elizabeth Hall recital his baggy trousers, gym shoes and orange shirt were complemented by what appeared to be a tea cosy; engaged in animated conversation with an empty front row, he replaced Debussy's Reflets dans l'eau with his own version of Light my Fire, greatly offending a stout lady who rose and left the hall. In March 1999 he announced his death, only to retract the statement, promising a 'Resurrection Recital' on Easter Sunday.

Such antics could obscure his true worth and his many recordings, including Beethoven's Five Piano Concertos, the 32 Sonatas and many Mozart Concertos testify to a cool, economical and stylish pianist and a musician of superb calibre. An occasional teacher Gulda was an exacting but sympathetic taskmaster, qualities confirmed by his former pupil Martha Argerich who claimed that, desperate for a particular sonority from her, he placed a wet sponge in her face exclaiming "that's the effect I want".

Wagner once said of Mozart that he was "music's genius of light and love" and earlier Schumann had celebrated what he saw as a "Grecian lightness and grace". Today we take a no less estimable but more inclusive view. We see Mozart as a genius of shade as well as light and it is this central ambiguity which makes his music ∆ and particularly his Piano Concertos ∆ such a rich and incomparable legacy. The darker dissonances of his life and work shadow and give increased stature to his sense of balance and consonance. On the one hand we think of Mozart as a lover of exuberant nonsense and a writer of risqué letters, and on the other as a man whose happiness was so often clouded by illness, anxiety, jealousy and neglect. To the uninitiated Mozart has always seemed simple and uncomplicated, but even true musicians have been slow to sense his complexity of thought and feeling, an ideal fusion of form and content that makes the performance of his work an acid test of taste and maturity.

In K.503 and K.537 Friedrich Gulda celebrates a radiant and life-affirming C major and D major. Nonetheless Mozart would hardly be Mozart if his grand and ceremonial Concerto, K.503 completed in 1786 were not enlivened with frequent minor-key digressions. And it is no less central to Mozart's element of surprise that the soloist, whose part becomes increasingly virtuosic, should enter so unobtrusively. Again, the orchestra's unclouded maestoso is answered by the piano, as if in quiet defiance, with a haunting transitional theme. The argument, constantly evolving and intricate, includes some highly expressive polyphony, a cadenza and a coda which takes its cue from the opening and grandiose tutti. Based chiefly on two melodies, the central Andante is notable for woodwind colouring treated as an integral part of the musical canvas, blended with both piano and strings, a mingling that gives the movement a distinctive mixture of magic and reserve. The opening of the final Allegretto, with its passing resemblance to the gavotte from the ballet music to Idomeneo, reminds us that Mozart's vocal and instrumental inspirations are inseparable. The tempo indication, too, is precise in the sense that too fast a pace can cause the subsequent bravura to sound rushed and skimped rather than full-bodied, the array of themes less than generously phrased or presented.

The Coronation and penultimate Piano Concerto is a less distinguished work but its profusion of ideas and scintillating solo part have endeared it to many pianists. Started in 1787 and completed a year later the first performance took place in Dresden in 1789. In 1790 it was performed as a kind of fringe event during the festivities for the coronation of Emperor Leopold II, thus the nickname Coronation Concerto. The festive bustle of the outer movements is contrasted with a central Larghetto of artless simplicity and there is a large contingent of wind instruments, including flute, two oboes, two bassoons, two trumpets, two horns and timpani.

Finally Beethoven's two movement Op.54 Sonata is a tantalising jeu d'esprit between the mighty peaks of the Waldstein and Appassionata Sonatas. From Gulda the opening Menuetto with its scotch-snap rhythm and mock-dramatic interjections (almost as if Beethoven had called a recalcitrant pupil back to the practise room) is graceful and gruff as required. And in the final and enchanting toccata where one voice chases another in an alternately playful and urgent game of tag or catch-as-catch-can, Gulda's velocity still allows him ample time for the final dizzying change from allegretto to più allegro, his photo-finish acceleration is like suddenly applied centrifugal force.
© Bryce Morrison, 2003