Michael Alexander Willens, Orchester der Kölner Akademie, Ronald Brautigam - Mozart: Works for Piano & Orchestra (2015)

In May 1784, shortly after completing the two piano concertos recorded here, Mozart described them in a letter to his father as 'concertos which are bound to make the player sweat'. In the Piano Concerto No. 15 in B flat major, K450 Andante the delicacy of the piano writing adds to the very special quality of the concerto, in which Mozart seems to point the way towards Beethoven. On this, their eighth instalment, Ronald Brautigam and Die Kölner Akademie have chosen to close the programme with the Rondo in D major, originally intended as a replacement finale for the Piano Concerto No. 5, K175. Offering a range of different moods and introducing a variety of quasi-operatic characters, the Rondo became greatly popular in Vienna and beyond, and was in fact sometimes published as a stand-alone work.