Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 27 & Symphony No. 29 The Cleveland Orchestra, Garrick Ohlsson & Franz Welser-Möstn

• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 - 1791): Piano Concerto No. 27 in B-Flat Major, K. 595:
• 1 Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 27 in B-Flat Major, K. 595: I. Allegro 14:33
• 2 Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 27 in B-Flat Major, K. 595: II. Larghetto 07:13
• 3 Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 27 in B-Flat Major, K. 595: III. Allegro 09:54
• Symphony No. 29 in A Major, K. 201:
• 4 Mozart: Symphony No. 29 in A Major, K. 201: I. Allegro moderato 07:24
• 5 Mozart: Symphony No. 29 in A Major, K. 201: II. Andante 06:25
• 6 Mozart: Symphony No. 29 in A Major, K. 201: III. Menuetto 03:21
• 7 Mozart: Symphony No. 29 in A Major, K. 201: IV. Allegro con spirito 04:57
• Total Runtime 53:47

Info for Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 27 & Symphony No. 29

This recording features Mozart’s final Piano Concerto—interpreted by the peerless Garrick Ohlsson—and his youthful Symphony No. 29, two works that share a striking intimacy and clarity that reveal the composer’s evolving genius.

This concerto is the last in Mozart’s incomparable series of piano concertos. He completed it on January 5, 1791, and entered the date in his catalog. It has been associated with the pianist Maria Magdalena Hofdemel, but the association is tenuous, since the one Vienna performance was given not by her but by Mozart himself on March 4, 1791, nine months before his death.

The concert became historic in many ways, being the last time Mozart played the piano in public. It was given in a restaurant across the street from his lodgings, and the soprano soloist who also took part was none other than Aloysia Weber, sister of Mozart’s wife, Constanze, and his adorata of some 12 years before.

Piano Concerto No. 27 is a strikingly serene work, even allowing for the brilliance always required in a concerto, with signs of a new level of maturity in Mozart’s style. Outwardly, the concerto resembles the composer’s others in its three balanced movements, judiciously placed cadenzas, and a tranquil middle movement of great beauty.

Garrick Ohlsson, piano
The Cleveland Orchestra
Franz Welser-Möst, conductor

Garrick Ohlsson
Since his triumph as winner of the 1970 Chopin International Piano Competition, pianist Garrick Ohlsson has established himself worldwide as a musician of magisterial interpretive and technical prowess. Although long regarded as one of the world’s leading exponents of the music of Frédéric Chopin, Mr. Ohlsson commands an enormous repertoire, which ranges over the entire piano literature. A student of the late Claudio Arrau, Mr. Ohlsson has come to be noted for his masterly performances of the works of Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert, as well as the Romantic repertoire. To date he has at his command more than 80 concertos, ranging from Haydn and Mozart to works of the 21st century, the most recent being “Oceans Apart” by Justin Dello Joio commissioned for him by the Boston Symphony Orchestra and now available on Bridge Recordings.

For the first time in its history, the Chopin Competition has invited an American to chair the jury, and Mr. Ohlsson assumes that role for the 19th incarnation in October 2025. He will then return as guest soloist to the Cleveland Orchestra and National Symphony (DC), followed in the winter by a duo tour with violist Richard O’Neill which takes them from Los Angeles to Charlottesville (VA), St. Paul (MN), and New York’s 92Y. In solo recital he can be heard in Vienna, London, Philadelphia, and Chicago.

An avid chamber musician, Mr. Ohlsson has collaborated with the Cleveland, Emerson, Tokyo and Takacs string quartets. His recording with latter of the Amy Beach and Elgar quintets released by Hyperion in June 2020 received great press attention. Passionate about singing and singers, Mr. Ohlsson has appeared in recital with such legendary artists as Magda Olivero, Jessye Norman, and Ewa Podleś.

Mr. Ohlsson can be heard on the Arabesque, RCA Victor Red Seal, Angel, BMG, Delos, Hänssler, Nonesuch, Telarc, Hyperion and Virgin Classics labels. His ten-disc set of the complete Beethoven Sonatas, for Bridge Records, has garnered critical acclaim, including a GRAMMY® for Vol. 3. His recording of Rachmaninoff’s Concerto No. 3, with the Atlanta Symphony and Robert Spano, was released in 2011. In the fall of 2008, the English label Hyperion re-released his 16-disc set of the Complete Works of Chopin followed in 2010 by all the Brahms piano variations, Goyescas by Enrique Granados, and music of Charles Tomlinson Griffes. Most recently on that label are Scriabin’s Complete Poèmes, Smetana Czech Dances, and ètudes by Debussy, Bartok and Prokofiev. The latest CDs in his ongoing association with Bridge Records are the Complete Scriabin Sonatas, “Close Connections,” a recital of 20th-Century pieces, and two CDs of works by Liszt. In recognition of the Chopin bicentenary in 2010, Mr. Ohlsson was featured in a documentary “The Art of Chopin” co-produced by Polish, French, British and Chinese television stations. Both Brahms concerti and Tchaikovsky’s second piano concerto were released on live performance recordings with the Melbourne and Sydney Symphonies on their own recording labels, and Mr. Ohlsson was featured on Dvorak’s piano concerto in the Czech Philharmonic’s recordings of the composer’s complete symphonies & concertos, released July of 2014 on the Decca label. Also recently released on Reference Recordings is the complete Beethoven concerti with Sir Donald Runnicles and the Grand Teton Music Festival Orchestra.

A native of White Plains, N.Y., Garrick Ohlsson began his piano studies at the age of 8, at the Westchester Conservatory of Music; at 13 he entered The Juilliard School, in New York City. His musical development has been influenced in completely different ways by a succession of distinguished teachers, most notably Claudio Arrau, Olga Barabini, Tom Lishman, Sascha Gorodnitzki, Rosina Lhévinne and Irma Wolpe. Although he won First Prizes at the 1966 Busoni Competition in Italy and the 1968 Montréal Piano Competition, it was his 1970 triumph at the International Chopin Competition in Warsaw, where he won the Gold Medal (and remains the single American to have done so), that brought him worldwide recognition as one of the finest pianists of his generation. Since then he has made nearly a dozen tours of Poland, where he retains immense personal popularity. Mr. Ohlsson was awarded the Avery Fisher Prize in 1994 and received the 1998 University Musical Society Distinguished Artist Award in Ann Arbor, MI. He is the 2014 recipient of the Jean Gimbel Lane Prize in Piano Performance from the Northwestern University Bienen School of Music, and in August 2018 the Polish Deputy Culture Minister awarded him with the Gloria Artis Gold Medal for cultural merit. He is a Steinway Artist and makes his home in San Francisco.

Booklet for Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 27 & Symphony No. 29