page_title: Piano concertos by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
section_title: Piano
hierarchical_section_title: Piano concertos by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart / Performance considerations / Piano
caption_attribution_description: English: Photo of a replica en:fortepiano made by Paul McNulty, following an 1804 original by the Viennese maker Anton Walter. Photo from Mr. McNulty's website (http://www.fortepiano.eu/). Permission was obtained from Mr. McNulty under the GFDL license by email correspondence, which is repeated below: Dear [Opus33's email name omitted], I hereby authorize the Wikipedia to use my photograph posted at http://www.fortepiano.eu/images/2_instruments/2/ff-c4.jpg, under the GNU Free Documentation License Sincerely Paul McNulty and Viviana Sofronitzki paul@fortepiano.eu www.fortepiano.eu viviana@sofronitzki.com www.sofronitzki.com Tyrsovo namesti 128 25726 Divisov, Czech Republic Tel: +420 317 855 286 Fax: +420 317 855 035 mobile:+420 737 927 567
context_page_description: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote 23 original concertos for piano and orchestra. These works, many of which Mozart composed for himself to play in the Vienna concert series of 1784–86, held special importance for him.
  For a long time relatively neglected, they are recognised as among his greatest achievements. They were championed by Donald Francis Tovey in his Essay on the Classical Concerto in 1903, and later by Cuthbert Girdlestone and Arthur Hutchings in 1940 and 1948, respectively. Hans Tischler published a structural and thematic analysis of the concertos in 1966, followed by the works by Charles Rosen, and Daniel N. Leeson and Robert Levin.
  The first complete edition in print was not until that of Richault from around 1850; since then the scores and autographs have become widely available.
context_section_description: All of Mozart's mature concertos were concertos for the piano and not the harpsichord.  His earliest efforts from the mid-1760s were presumably for the harpsichord, but Broder showed in 1941 that Mozart himself did not use the harpsichord for any concerto from No. 12 (K. 414) onwards.  In fact, Mozart's original piano was returned to Vienna in 2012 after a 200-year absence and was used in a concert shortly after its return.  This is the same piano that Mozart kept at his home and brought through the streets for use at various concerts.
  Although early Viennese pianos were in general rather inferior instruments, the fortepianos made by Mozart's friend Stein and Anton Walter, instruments that Mozart much admired, were much more suitable for Mozart's purposes. The fortepianos were of course much quieter instruments than the modern concert grand piano, so that the balance between the orchestra and soloist may not easily be reproduced using modern instruments, especially when small orchestras are used.  The rise in interest in "authentic performance" issues in the last few decades has, however, led to a revival of the fortepiano, and several recordings now exist with an approximate reconstruction of the sound Mozart might have himself expected.
caption: Fortepiano by Paul McNulty after Walter & Sohn, ca. 1805
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