In 1776, a French pianist visited Salzburg, Austria. A young composer there, captivated by her playing, was commissioned to write a concerto for her — Mozart. — Mozart. The work, numbered No. 9, K. 271, is recognized as a major piece, praised as "Mozart's first unequivocal masterpiece" by Charles Rosen and as a monumental work the composer himself never surpassed by Alfred Einstein.
The reason was its unprecedented innovation. Breaking with the convention of having the soloist enter after the orchestral exposition, the piano answers immediately after the opening orchestral fanfare. It is a radical staging in which orchestra and soloist interact from the start. This design was not attempted again until Beethoven wrote his fourth concerto. In the second movement, the piano sings as a tragic protagonist of opera seria, and midway through the third movement it suddenly breaks into a "heavenly minuet," offering an aesthetic experience that arrives like a gift.
The concerto carries the nickname "Jeunehomme," French for "young man." The reason behind it is rather absurd. In 1912, two scholars guessed that "Jeunehomme," a nickname Mozart used, was the name of the pianist who premiered the work. Mozart had written the name as "Jenomy" in a letter, and some scholars assumed he had misspelled it because he was poor at French pronunciation. Then in 2003, Michael Lorenz established that the pianist was Victoire Jenamy, a woman pianist then living in Vienna. The corrected name is increasingly used today, but "Jeunehomme" still appears often enough. The century-long aftershock of a butterfly effect set off by a groundless guess is dizzying.
