Mozart’s divine A major piano concerto came on the radio while I was reviewing Blair Tindall‘s story of the conflicting feelings of professional musicians as they try to maintain youthful ideals when confronted with the harsh realities of the music business.

One doesn’t have to have a long relationship with a piece (whether “classical” or popular)—it can be amazing to make a discovery in later years. But a cumulative personal listening-history is enriching.

All the late Mozart piano concertos (and most of the earlier ones too) are special, but hearing the A major concerto again, my immersion in it is a cumulative result of accompanying it in my teens (actually, even practising it, in the days when I could also play piano), and later for Mozart’s own incarnation, Robert Levin (also here).

(YouTube BTL comments always entertaining:)

Was this recorded using period microphones too?
Yes and it needs period listener too.

But (you know me) I also have to offer Hélène Grimaud playing the slow movement—sod the purists, it’s no less enchanting to the ear than to the eye:

See also The death of Stalin.