Background
A few days after the first performance, the composer's father, Leopold, visiting in Vienna, wrote to his daughter Nannerl about her brother's recent success: " an excellent new piano concerto by Wolfgang, on which the copyist was still at work when we got there, and your brother didn't even have time to play through the rondo because he had to oversee the copying operation."
It is written in the key of D minor. Other works by the composer in that key include the Fantasia K. 397 for piano, Requiem, a Kyrie, the aria "Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen" from the opera The Magic Flute and parts of the dark opera Don Giovanni. It is the first of two piano concertos written in a minor key (No. 24 in C minor being the other).
The young Ludwig van Beethoven admired this concerto and kept it in his repertoire. Famed conductor Daniel Barenboim contends that this concerto was Joseph Stalin's favorite piece of music. Famous composers who wrote cadenzas for this popular concerto include Beethoven (WoO 58), Charles-Valentin Alkan, Johannes Brahms (WoO 16), Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Feruccio Busoni and Clara Schumann.
Read more about this topic: Piano Concerto No. 20 (Mozart)
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