From Print to CD
The preservation and interpretation of music that is more than two hundred years old and its transmission through several generations is by no means straightforward—even in the case of a work like K. 450, whose sources are well preserved. Even the best sources do not contain "the music" but rather only an incomplete set of instructions for realizing "the music"—a process that is far from transparent. As musical styles, pianos and piano playing changed, Mozart's style was no longer the prevailing one and needed to be explained in textbooks and pedagogical editions. Eventually there was a rebellion against the overlay of opinions found in most editions and with that rebellion there arose a demand for Urtext ("original text") editions. The following items illuminate some of the steps in the transmission of K. 450 from Mozart's time to ours.
Early Editions
In 1798 and 1799 Breitkopf & Härtel negotiated with Mozart’s widow Constanze for access to some of Mozart's works. The result was the frequently reprinted Oeuvres Complettes—17 volumes of scores of vocal and instrumental chamber music published between 1798 and 1806. Between 1800 and 1804 Breitkopf also published a parallel series, Concerts pour le Pianoforte, which contained sets of parts for 20 concertos, many published for the first time. This was not the first edition of K. 450, however, which had appeared two years earlier in Vienna. The formats of Breitkopf's publications followed the eighteenth-century custom: music for two, three or four performers appeared in scores or parts or sometimes both, whereas music for larger groups was usually available only as sets of parts.
Early Mozart Scholarship
Ludwig Ritter von Köchel, an independently wealthy botanist, educator and amateur musician, and Otto Jahn, professor of philology and archaeology at the University of Bonn, coordinated their research to produce, respectively, the first complete catalogue of Mozart’s works and the first Mozart biography based upon modern scholarly principles. Taken together, these two publications provided the foundation for subsequent Mozart scholarship. After completing his catalogue, Köchel helped to finance and organize the first complete, generally reliable edition of all of Mozart's works. Such a project would have been impossible prior to his and Jahn's research. Reprints from this monumental publication continue to serve performers in all parts of the world.
Performing Editions
Concerto no. 15 in Bb major for the piano, K. 450, critically revised, fingered, and the orchestral accompaniments arr. for a second piano by Isidor Philipp. New York: G. Schirmer; reprinted 1951.
The earliest publications of Mozart's works usually involved no editorial emendations. From the 1820s on, however, so-called pedagogical or performing editions proliferated. Characteristically, these left most of Mozart's pitches and rhythms unchanged but provided an overlay of instructions for tempo, fingering, phrasing, articulation, dynamics, and pedaling, representing the taste, technique, and opinions of a famous performer, pedagogue, or scholar. Isidore Philipp (1863-1958), professor of piano at the Paris Conservatoire from 1893 to 1934, moved to New York at the outbreak of World War II, where he continued to perform and teach until his 93rd year.
The Neue Mozart-Ausgabe
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Neue Ausgabe sämtlicher Werke. Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1955.
New political, social, and cultural climates brought by two world wars and the Cold War shaped a desire to create a new complete edition of Mozart's works. The Neue Mozart-Ausgabe produced all of its main volumes between 1955 and 1991, thus (as one wag observed) taking longer to edit and publish Mozart's compositions than it took him to write them. By 2006 the remaining supplementary volumes, containing critical reports, some questionable works, sketches, fragments, indexes, etc., will have been published.
That the editions contained in the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe are not identical to other Urtext editions, even when based upon precisely the same sources, suggests some of the insuperable problems inherent in the concept.
Recordings
In the late 1960s there arose great interest in restoring not just Mozart's notes to their Ur condition but also his instruments and even (insofar as these could be ascertained) the performance practices of the musicians of his day. This led to increasing numbers of performances on period instruments, either museum originals or modern replicas. Two of the pianists most successful in this undertaking have been Malcolm Bilson of Cornell and Robert Levin of Harvard. Both have recorded Mozart's concertos with period-instrument orchestras. Below, one may hear first Bilson, then Levin performing the passage whose history we have been following over a period of more than two centuries.
Malcolm Bilson, piano; English Baroque Soloists, John Eliot Gardiner, director, The Piano Concerto no. 13 in C major, K. 415, and no. 15 in Bb major, K. 450. Hamburg: Archiv Produktion, 1985.
Robert Levin, piano; The Academy of Ancient Music (on authentic instruments), Christopher Hogwood, conductor, The Piano Concertos no. 15 in B flat major, K. 450, and no. 26 in D major, K. 537. London: Editions de l'Oiseau-Lyre, 1997.