Piano concerto

My Piano Concerto, The World of Yesterday, began with an email during one of the darker days of the pandemic: would I like to write a score for a movie about a concert pianist writing a piano concerto. As I looked at my concert diary, blank but for Zoom calls, it seemed like a wonderful way to keep me busy. I’d never wanted to write a piano concerto (how to begin?) but the characters and outline of this film gave me a handle: an ageing Austrian baroness and a young American composer in the early 1930s; she commissions him to write a piece and invites him to compose it at

Grade: A+ Yet another double bill of Mozart’s Piano Concertos 20 and 23! There’s an online database of 185 recordings of the first of these, the brooding K466 in D minor, and the classically perfect K488 in A major isn’t far behind. Can there really be anything new to say about either of them? The answer is yes, and in virtually every bar. Olga Pashchenko, a Russian-born pianist based in the Netherlands, here directs the top-flight period ensemble Il Gardellino in her second album of Mozart concertos. She’s playing a fortepiano, but don’t let that put you off: it’s a sweet-toned instrument whose soft action helps Pashchenko deliver cheeky ornaments