Description
The Piano Concerto No. 21 in C major, K. 467, was completed on March 9, 1785 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, four weeks after the completion of the previous D minor concerto, K. 466. Here we have the most famous excerpt from the concerto, the second movement “Andante” otherwise known as “Elvira Madigan”.
In the Original Concerto there are three movements.
1.Allegro maestoso; in common time. The tempo marking is in Mozart’s catalog of his own works, but not in the autograph manuscript.
2.Andante in F major. In both the autograph score and in his personal catalog, Mozart notated the meter as Alla breve.
3.Allegro vivace assai.
The second movement was featured in the 1967 Swedish film Elvira Madigan. The imagery used in the movie was of a lazy boat ride on a placid lake, and the limpid sound of this movement likely motivated its choice here. This has led to an anachronistic nickname of Elvira Madigan for the concerto.
