Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos. 20 & 23 - CD

Two years after her recording of Mozart's piano concertos KV 271 and KV 459, Olga Pashchenko returns to the Il Gardellino ensemble for the concertos KV 466 and KV 488. KV 466 is in D minor, a key that Mozart often uses to express the anger of his female characters in his operas. KV 488 was composed a year later in 1786 and is in the luminous key of A major, although without losing any of the theatrical dynamism of KV 466. They represent an almost dramatic, pre-Romantic theatricality for Nicolas Derny, who sees these concertos as the precursors of two of Mozart's greatest masterpieces: the Requiem and Le nozze di Figaro. Olga Pashchenko here plays a replica of an Anton Walter fortepiano (ca. 1792) built by Paul McNulty.