Back when I was an undergraduate at university I had a friend who used to regularly buy classical CDs (pre-streaming days of course), but because we were poor impoverished students it was always the cheapest of bargain basement recordings by unheard of soloists with an orchestra like the Tirana Philharmonic. The quality veered between the actually not bad to the pretty terrible. Occasionally, though, you’d come across a really interestingly eccentric nugget. And so it was with a CD that combined the Gershwin Piano Concerto in F, with the Mozart Piano Concerto in D minor K466. An unusual mix, but the mixture did not end there. So, while the Gershwin Piano Concerto was a fairly standard performance, the unremembered pianist decided to take the cadenza in the Mozart into their own hands and perform a rather striking jazz improvisation. My friend called it off-piste, though frankly I think if you were a purist you might end up being more ‘piste’-off.

On doing a bit more background for this entry I discovered there are actually other recordings that likewise shall we say push Mozart out of the picture – including a recording with the St Paul Chamber Orchestra and jazz masters Bobby McFerrin (who provides a vocal prelude to the concerto) and Chick Corea, who goes so far off the tonality of the concerto in the cadenza you actually feel he may never be able to return safely. The recording can be heard here.

Not Mozart

So, are these extemporizations appallingly unwarranted? Well no, because of course the cadenza sections in classical concertos were specifically designed for the pianist to be able to show off their improvisatory virtuoso skills. So, it’s not surprising therefore that other composers have tried their hand at doodling on the works of their great and good predecessors. Indeed, the most commonly played cadenza for the Mozart D minor concerto is one written Beethoven – and a jolly good one it is too.

It’s interesting to see that in 1879 Saint-Saens pays the favour forward for Beethoven by supplying two shortish cadenzas for the first and third movements of the fourth piano concerto. Saint-Saens joins a list of other composers to write cadenzas for this concerto: Brahms, Busoni, Reinecke, Clara Schumann. The piano concerto was one of Saint-Saens’ favourites, so it’s a bit disappointing that his cadenzas are so perfunctory. The first movement cadenza is the longer one and uses much of the some melodic material as the movement (fairly reasonably) albeit with an interesting modulation from G major into B major – but it’s not a very compelling interlude otherwise. The third movement cadenza is more of a short virtuosic flourish with little musical interest. I can only find one recording (from 1948 with Artur Rubinstein playing the concerto. If you can get by the hiss, the performance is excellent, but I don’t think Saint-Saens cadenzas add any excitement to the concerto in general.

Cadenzas for Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 4

Why you might want to listen to it: Curiosity value, but you have to be pretty curious. It’s also less jarring than a jazz improvisation.

Why you might want to avoid it: At least a jazz improvisation would be interesting.