I discounted the first movement, with its gracious and sprightly tunes, the piano scampering around the orchestral parts with the usual firm joy of Mozart-far too happy for me. We had an LP of the concerto (I don’t recall the pianist, but it wasn’t Curzon, an intensely self-critical performer who didn’t release a version in his lifetime), and I started listening to it. Curzon had studied with Artur Schnabel and Wanda Landowska, and, above all, Curzon was English, and in those days you could feel almost patriotic about famous English musicians. My father collected pianists and their performances. I didn’t know the piece, but I knew about Curzon. My father, a man who in later life would think nothing of driving forty miles on his own to hear Bach or Beethoven, had recently seen the English pianist Clifford Curzon in concert, playing Mozart’s last piano concerto, No. I was thirteen, fundamentally cheerful but convinced I was fundamentally melancholy, and ravenous for all the music I could get my hands on, especially music that made me tearful.
At some point in the autumn of 1979, I became obsessed with a few bars of Mozart.
Music has its seasons, and people have their needs.
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