Howard Shelley, Sinfonieorchester St Gallen - Franz Xaver Mozart & Muzio Clementi: Piano Concertos (...

Franz Xaver Mozart was born just four months before the death of his father, Wolfgang Amadeus. A pianist of similarly precocious talent, he nevertheless wrote just two piano concertos: coupled with Clementi's only surviving essay in the genre, they make a sparkling addition to our Classical Piano Concerto series.

You can't help feeling sorry for Franz Xaver Mozart: his Dad was a hard act to follow. Not that he ever knew him-he was just four months old when the great man died-but his efforts to market himself as 'WA Mozart Jr' fell largely on stony ground. The two concertos recorded here are tastefully written, and the opening movement of the E flat work includes excursions into some exotic keys, but they're otherwise rather lacking in memorable ideas. Best are the slow movements-in the C major Concerto, a gently melancholic set of variations in the minor with an affecting major-mode coda; and in the E flat work, an expressive C minor Andante. Richard Wigmore's perceptive booklet notes liken the latter piece to the Andantino from Mozart's Jeunehomme Concerto K271, and we may also think of the slow movement, again in C minor of the Concerto K482. Howard Shelley plays both pieces quite beautifully, investing each phrase with subtly understated expression.
Clementi composed his lone surviving concerto in the mid-1790s, when Mozart Junior was still a babe in arms. Again, it's the slow movement that leaves the deepest impression: as a rhapsodic meditation by the pianist on the orchestra's initial melody. Shelley keeps the fine St Gallen Symphony Orchestra on its toes throughout, and the performances could hardly be bettered.