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Pianist David Deveau enjoys a distinguished career internationally, performing in the US, Canada, the UK, Europe and Asia. His first recording for Steinway, Siegfried Idyll, was critically acclaimed in the New York Times and Gramophone, and was listed as one of the year’s ten best classical albums by the Boston Globe in 2015. Mr. Deveau now brings us intimate chamber versions of Mozart’s delightful Piano Concerto No. 14 and Beethoven’s lyrical Piano Concerto No. 4. Deveau writes: “The genre ‘concerto’ pits soloist against orchestra in a sort of cooperative struggle, a contest between the individual and the larger forces of the ensemble. In the waning days of the 18th century, the rise of public, ticketed concerts inspired composers to write concerti that would both show off the soloist’s and composer’s virtuosity in a large concert venue. Mozart spent much of the 1780s presenting such works at subscription concerts in Vienna, performing the solo parts, conducting the orchestra from the keyboard, and improvising cadenzas on the spot. Many of these concerti became instantly popular, and absent radio or recordings in that era, people wanted to play the works in their homes. The ‘a quattro’ version, for soloist and string quartet, was thus born… In the performance on this recording of the 14th concerto, K449, I have taken the liberty of adding bass to the ensemble as it gives a more orchestral sensibility. Mozart left cadenzas for a number of the concerti, and I play his originals here.”