A moving record: the musical will left by a great pianist who left us all too soon last year, pianist Lars Vogt, who died on the 5th of September 2022, aged 51, in fact, just days before his 52nd birthday.

The record, comprising two concertos for piano and orchestra by Mozart, was released on September 1st 2023 on Ondine label. In April 2021, when he recorded it in Paris, Lars Vogt was already ill with cancer, in fact in the midst of chemotherapy. But he was very keen on recording this last record: Mozart, namely Mozart concertos number 9 and 24, with the Paris Chamber Orchestra. He arrived in Paris pale and exhausted, but, as the sound engineer he worked with confesses in an interview in the CD booklet , by the time he started recording it, he was effectively transfigured - a story that reminds us of another pianist who died before his time, the Romanian Dinu Lipatti.

Lars Vogt died before the recordings you'll hear today were released; he knew he'd never get to hear them himself, so he asked his sound engineer to give them to pianist Paul Lewis for his final audition.

Christoph Franke, the sound engineer, remembers other times when he listened to Lars Vogt play Mozart and the pure happiness that Lars Vogt had while playing inspired him. He understood perfectly why the pianist chose Mozart, precisely because Mozart, with his music coming from another world, could be the last word Lars Vogt would say to the world. When he recorded this record, no one knew if there was any chance that Lars Vogt would beat cancer, there was hope, but also the despair of death, which comes across very strongly in the recordings you will hear.

Mozart's Concerto No. 9 for piano and orchestra has the second part written in a minor key, which gives it a tragic character - at the end of the recording of this part, the sound engineer recalls, everyone held their breath and shed a tear - it was a premonition of an inevitable end to come.

It's easy to see why Lars Vogt chose Mozart's only concerto in a minor key, No. 24 in C minor, for this record, which could be his musical will and which, it turns out, became his swan song.

But what seems somewhat striking is that it is not tragedy that pervades these last recordings of a great pianist, but hope, faith in the beauty of the world, which he served as a musician through all of his life.

In the fine piano playing of the pianist, who also conducts the piano orchestra, we might find answers about the meaning of life and our existence as human beings - answers that we need all more today, in a world that seems to have lost its ground. An eye-opening audition!