# Why do people neglect Brahms's cadenzas to Mozart Piano Concertos?



## DreamBigKeys (Apr 15, 2018)

Brahms composed five cadenzas for Mozart piano concertos, and I think they're all majestic in their own matter.

The 17th piano concerto: 1 cadenza for the first movement, 2 cadenzas for the second movement (pick one)
The 20th piano concerto: 1 cadenza for the first movement
The 24th piano concerto: 1 cadenza for the first movement

At least for the 20th piano concerto I prefer Brahms's cadenza over Beethoven's, which is odd because Beethoven is my favorite composer.


The cadenzas without the concertos are performed by Idil Biret, the cadenza to Concerto 20 only (with the coda included) is performed by Michael Rische.


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## poconoron (Oct 26, 2011)

The Brahms for the 20th is pretty good, but a touch too busy for my liking. I prefer the Beethoven.
His cadenza for the 24th I don't care for at all, and I've never heard the 17th.


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

Perhaps the rejection is because they are not considered to line up well with Mozart's style and time period? Just guessing.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Bulldog said:


> Perhaps the rejection is because they are not considered to line up well with Mozart's style and time period? Just guessing.


Very possibly true. When LvB came to Vienna in the early 1790s, he was known primarily as a pianist. He had Mozart's 20th in his repertoire and likely composed his cadenzas to the concerto for his own use. At that time, Mozart's language was his language, and the fit would have been natural.

Brahms, coming quite a bit later, had a different musical language. He would have had a choice between purposely writing in a way (to him) archaic, or else using his own style. Such things do not always turn out for the best!


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## trazom (Apr 13, 2009)

In the case of the 17th piano concerto, Mozart's own cadenzas for that piece are still available to performers today. I'm guessing most would just rather use his than those of a composer with a different style.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

The Brahms cadenzas are probably ignored by performers of discerning taste, because they are anachronistic.

No musical era has been misunderstood more than the Classical by the Romantic.


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## DreamBigKeys (Apr 15, 2018)

Oh okay all these responses make sense. Thanks


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## RICK RIEKERT (Oct 9, 2017)

KenOC said:


> When LvB came to Vienna in the early 1790s, he was known primarily as a pianist. He had Mozart's 20th in his repertoire and likely composed his cadenzas to the concerto for his own use.


The late great Beethoven scholar Sieghard Brandenburg has established that all of Beethoven's surviving cadenzas for opp. 15, 19, 37, 61 (piano version), and K. 466 were composed for his student the Archduke Rudolph in 1809 for inclusion in the latter's prized library of Beethoven manuscripts. As we know, Beethoven's improvisatory skills were legendary and he would not have needed the written cadenzas for his own use.

In 1828 Hummel wrote that the improvised cadenza was going out of style, as composers increasingly preferred to write out their own. Up until his Piano Concerto no. 5 Beethoven had been content to allow performers to improvise their own cadenzas, as was still the common practice. When he wrote the Emperor Concerto Beethoven insisted that there was to be no improvised cadenza (non si fa cadenza) and that the performer was to adhere to the example he provided.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

RICK RIEKERT said:


> The late great Beethoven scholar Sieghard Brandenburg has established that all of Beethoven's surviving cadenzas for opp. 15, 19, 37, 61 (piano version), and K. 466 were composed for his student the Archduke Rudolph in 1809 for inclusion in the latter's prized library of Beethoven manuscripts...


Thanks for the note! I had not heard this and would like to read more about it. Any idea how I might do that?

Two things: First, you didn't mention Op. 58, the 4th PC. Beethoven wrote two sets of cadenzas for this. Surely not both for Rudolph's library?

Second, you wrote "composed" for Rudolph's library. Might it not as easily be "written out"? Beethoven played all these works in concert and I doubt his cadenzas, after a few performances, were fully improvised. That would be a risky thing, even for the best improvisers. And later in life, Beethoven mentioned that he could recall his earlier improvisations in detail and re-play them whenever he liked.


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## RICK RIEKERT (Oct 9, 2017)

Ken, I think Friedhelm Loesti, in the preface to his Urtext edition of Beethoven’s cadenzas, sheds some light on these issues:

“In his own performances of his piano concertos Beethoven seems to have followed tradition and improvised the cadenzas, not least because his improvisatory abilities were by all accounts extraordinary. The extant sketches for the cadenzas probably served in most cases to prepare Beethoven for such improvisations. The fact that he nevertheless committed a larger number of cadenzas to paper after having completed his Fourth Piano Concerto and during the work on his Fifth may have two possible reasons. Since his encroaching deafness caused him to perform only rarely in public during the period in question (1807–09), these cadenzas might have been intended to provide other performers with concrete examples of what he intended, or even to serve as substitute for improvised cadenzas. We do not know, however, that he made any effort to publish them. It is more likely that he wrote them for specific performers. In his letter of 30 January 1808 to Count Moriz von Dietrichstein, Beethoven specifically mentions one “Mr Felsenburg” (Johann Baptist Stainer von Felsburg) in just such a connection (see Ludwig van Beethoven, Briefwechsel Gesamtausgabe, ed. by Sieghard Brandenburg, Munich, 1996–98, no. 317). It is also significant that the autographs of all the works in the present edition, with the exception of Cadenza no. 2, became part of the same private music collection, in most cases probably not long after they were composed. It is highly likely that they were written for the practical use of the collector himself, Archduke Rudolph of Austria, who was Beethoven’s pupil, friend and patron and reputedly an excellent pianist.

This supposition has reference primarily to a complete set of manuscripts with inserts for all the passages in Beethoven’s piano concertos in which such passages are either necessary or recommendable, and which are not included in the actual score of the concertos themselves. Specifically they comprise Cadenzas for the first movements of the first three Piano Concertos (nos. 3–5 in our edition), for the outer movements of the Fourth Piano Concerto (nos. 8, 11) and the piano version of the Violin Concerto (nos. 12, 15) plus transitions from the second to the third movement (no. 13) and for the first return of the rondo theme in the third movement of the piano version of the Violin Concerto (no. 14). The Fifth Piano Concerto requires no such added interludes from the soloist. Our suggestion that the abovementioned cadenzas and other insertions all belong together is particularly supported by the fact that they were written on 12-stave paper all made by the same manufacturer (Kotenschlos) – a paper that Beethoven did not use in other cadenzas. Comparisons of paper types lead us to assume that at least most of them were written down in the year 1809. They seem to have been sent to Archduke Rudolph in individual instalments. It is possible that the composition of the cadenzas had some connection to the contract that Beethoven signed on 1 March 1809, in which he was assured annual financial support by both Archduke Rudolph and the Princes Lobkowitz and Kinsky.”


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Rick, many thanks! This is far more information than I expected, and almost all of it new to me. I very much appreciate your going to the effort to post this!

BTW you've answered my questions exactly, or at least as exactly as they likely can ever be answered.


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