Piano Concerto No. 21 (Mozart)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 21 in C major K 467 was written in 1785. It has three movements.
It was in March of 1785 that Mozart composed his Concerto no. 21, completing it merely one month after his previous concerto. He would write four more in the next twenty months. Each of those concerti was written for Mozart himself to perform in concert in Vienna. Since he intended to act as soloist, he did not bother to write out the solo cadenzas, deciding instead to improvise them on the spot. Such a practice brought great verve and spontaneity to a performance, but unfortunately it has left us without the composer's own cadenzas. Since Mozart's time, pianists have had to compose their own cadenzas, or use those created by others. For any modern pianist to match the master's seemingly effortless style is always challenging, but it is particularly so in this case, for this concerto is among the most technically demanding of all Mozart's concerti. The composer's own father, Leopold Mozart, described the Concerto no. 21 as "astonishingly difficult." Today, it is less frequently remembered for its difficulty than for its lyrical second movement, which was prominently featured in the 1967 Swedish film, "Elvira Madigan."