Concertos for piano and orchestra (Ciccolini) (1986)

The two piano concertos suggest that Salieri was a more substantial composer than history has indicated. They are interesting as well-made works in the galant classic style, and even more so as anticipations of the great Mozart concertos. Both Salieri concertos were composed in 1773 - four years before Mozart's first great piano concerto (E flat, K. 271). Listening to them, one can see the roots of Mozart almost at the topsoil. Salieri often did, in these concertos, work in the musical small change of the day. He was not a very imaginative composer. But he did have craft. And in the slow movements, where he seems to be at his best, there is a fine fund of agreeable, and sometimes even personal, Italian melody. The slow movement of the C major Concerto is a direct anticipation of the great second movement of Mozart's A major Piano Concerto (K. 488). (...)