Mozart Concerto in A Major K.488

[jlh]

I had the opportunity to play this concerto with orchestra last year and thought I'd share the video with you.  The guy I hired to make the DVD didn't put any sound on it [grr!], so I had to put it in myself from the audio CD he also made me -- so there's no pre-performance ambiance or anything...  He also spelled my name wrong.

Anyway, hope you enjoy it!

https://www.arcticvisionentertainment.com/josh/joshmozart.avi

-josh

Note: this file is fairly large (c. 30MB), so please allow time to load.

[musik_man]

Just finished watching it.  You were excellent, though the orchestra wasn't quite as good(it may be the recording that makes them so.)  Just out of curiousity, which cadenza did you play?  I have a CD with Horowitz playing this concerto and he does the Busoni one, which I think works better.

BTW I love this concerto.  All you Mozart haters need to listen to this and acknowledge your wrongness.

[jlh]

Thanks!

I actually played the cadenza Mozart wrote for this concerto.  It wasn't his normal practice to write the cadenzas, but he did on this occasion.  The score I used was the Peters Edition [Urtext], and the editors' notes say the cadenza they put in the score is exactly the same in every respect as Mozart's autograph.

[sharon_f]

Very nice job, Josh. Congratulations!

[rachmaninoff_969]

Josh,

Despite some technical slips and a few tempo issues with the orchestra your performance was wonderful!  I thoroughly enjoyed it.  You have such a variety of musical ideas, which is so necessary when playing Mozart (he was the king of constantly changing the colour of the formal structures in his music).  Just out of curiosity, how old are you?  I found your playing to be quite mature, and you look very young.  I will probably get slammed for this, but I believe that Mozart is much more difficult to interpret than anything Romantic.  Anyway, congrats!  You play beautifully!

[jlh]

At the time of performance, I was 22.  I tend to agree about the difficulty in interpreting Mozart.  Later composers have generally come more naturally to me.  This was actually the first significant work by Mozart I ever learned, so it was a great experience putting that together.

Yeah, there were a couple weird things that happened for that performance -- ironically on the easier parts...  Just goes to show that you can practice something till it's perfect, but then add an orchestra and audience and it's a whole new ballgame.  Still, I look at it as a learning experience, and things like that simply can't be learned apart from actually doing it.

I actually only got to rehearse with the orchestra a total of 30 minutes prior to the performance.  I would have liked to have more time, but sometimes that's what happens in the undergrad world.

[johnnypiano]

It's a great piece.  Unfortunately, I couldn't get it to download, even though I have a Broadband speed of 1 MB.  Any ideas. guys?   

[jlh]

Try right-clicking and "save target as..."  and see if that helps.  Even though it's on a fairly fast server, it's a rather large file, so you may need to wait a bit longer for it to download.  Hope this helps!

[krittyot]

took me 10 secs to download.

Blame the orchestra.