Here things become a little more tricky: the great repertoire is wider is style and character. More, differently from the Violin Concertos, the piano may express the composer’s feelings and their relation with the listener’s more accurately. I’ll welcome with curiosity also un-favourites (if the word exists).
So, that’s me.
Having studied accurately about ten of the 27 for my work, I have a slight bias towards Mozart’s: for reasons unrelated to me or my emotional response, rather to the perfection of the use of material, the orchestration, the balance of the form. My preferences are so varied and probably non obvious: the Kv467 in C rather than the so-called ‘pre-sturm-und-drang’ Kv466 in d minor, whose slow movement, with its repetition of the impetuous triplets section I find a little insistent and not necessary to express Mozart’s more emotional moments. What I admire in the concert is that all the material - first and second theme, etc. - of the first movement, including the orchestral introduction, is derived and developed from a single basic motive, which is not unusual with Mozart but is with the epoch.
The Kv488 for the freshness of the 1st movement and the marvelous melancholy - true melancholy - of the Adagio.
The last one, Kv 595, because it’s it, that’s all.
I confess a slight indifference for Beethoven Piano Concertos proportionally increasing with their ordinal number: the 5th, ‘Emperor’, is to me a boring and very trivial use of the splendid Eb Major key, and its stiff and celebratory character cannot have come out of the same man who wrote the Diabelli variations. Where is the sarcasm, the thrill to provocate and laugh about the audience’s response? The 4th is for me the same mystery as the Allegretto from the 7th Symphony: I see why everyone loves it, but it bores me and I can’t do a thing about it. The first three I like a lot: I need the more fresh, stingy, spontaneous, less reflective Ludwig; let’s leave the Frowning Titan for the Reader’s Digest style books.
I love Brahms’ 1st in spite of not being the greatest Brahms’ fan: wherever there’s spontaneous beauty and tenderness, I am with the author. The main piano motive entrance is irresistible; the ‘dramatic’ sections are a Brahms’ by-product that cannot be avoided, the man was too fearful of being left behind and down by history had he avoided trying to retain Beethoven’s (misunderstood) legacy. Bruckner did, instead, and he became the true bridge between 19th and 20th century.
I love the Schumann Concerto because of its authentically Romantic, spring-melancholic but lighthearted character; but it needs a player who gets the deepest and truest of it.
Now the bunch of the Romantics: Čaikovskji, Grieg, Rachmaninov, Dvořák : once per year is enough. As for Dvořák, allow me a comparison with those teams who always linger in the upper end of second division but never get to reach first one: if you listen to his first two Symphonies, the ‘Aus der Neue Welt’ sounds like John Williams in comparison.
America may have spoiled Dvořák, but not Bartók: a special mention for his 3rd Piano Concerto and the sublime second movement.
So, sorry for the long and opinionated post: I’ll do my choice - Mozart’s Kv271, 488 and 595, mixed in a single one.
Max
