No. 22, K.482, has 2.23 of symphonic introduction before the piano appears as if they're filling in while the maestro finds his way out of the dressing room. It takes a while before he is in his stride, tinkling pleasantly along without finding a theme to compare with the big hits. Charles Ricard-Hamelin is best once he's warmed up and fleet-fingered in the rippling flow of the standard template for a Mozart piano concerto. Not that there's anything 'standard' about Mozart but he's one of those whose 'other work' would be welcome in anybody else's oeuvre but doesn't get much of a look in against his best.
The second movement is more hesitant, maybe even sombre, with the woodwind helping towards some serenity in a piece that will benefit from more plays. The third uses a tune that might have been of use to G&S, loiters in the middle and finishes amicably.
No. 24, K.491, is subdued but not as 'tragic' as the sleeve notes who have us believe. The dark in Mozart is still luminous. Luminous and ominous at the same time is something that nobody else has ever done like him.
Having had two odd-numbered concertos played by Daniel Barenboim since a formative age, their indelible print is too much with me to ever be erased and they wouldn't be anyway. A Mozart Piano Concerto is like a Vermeer canvas or a Thomas Hardy novel, a thing in itself beyond any doubting. In a way, 22 and 24 are like new additions to those of us who might have noticed it was the odds numbers we always heard but never troubled to find what came in between, which is the reason for buying it once I noticed.
They are like the others, but in third gear. Mozart's third gear is overdrive for almost every other composer that ever lived. Richard-Hamelin positively pirouettes around the keyboard, floating like the best interpreters of this music seem to. You do need to be able to not bash it too hard to give the best rendition of such pensive gentility.
