Mozart completed the Piano Concerto #22 on December 16, 1785, and played it that same evening at a subscription concert. So I have my doubts about the quality of the minimally rehearsed, if rehearsed at all, orchestral performance on such an occasion.
Whatever Mozart’s personal difficulties and diminishing prospects at the time, there was a sufficient number of connoisseurs still available to pack the subscription concert that introduced this concerto on December 23, 1785. It was very well received, most notably the slow movement, which had to be encored.
But what strikes me most about K. 482 is the luxuriant, even by Mozartian standards, interplay between the piano and the woodwind quintet – flute and pairs of clarinets and bassoons – in the second and third movements, the winds rising out of the orchestra almost as a separate entity to engage in poignant, private chamber music conversations among themselves and with the piano.
This is all the more striking for occurring within the context of such “public” music, i.e., scored for what was in its time a large orchestra.
Here is the concerto #22 as performed by Mitsuko Uchida:
