On Sun, 21 Feb 2016 20:00:48 -0500, Beth .Garfinkel <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>Isn't there a famous anecdote about a famous Viennese pianist once
>performing one of his own concerti from a blank part?  Supposedly, he had a
>page turner and everything, but he hadn't had time to copy out the part, so
>it was all for show.  

Your'e thinking of Ignaz von Seyfried's story about the premiere of Beethoven's Third Piano Concerto Op 37 on 5 April 1803. Seyfried, who was conducting the orchestra, was "invited" by Beethoven to turn pages during his concerto movements, which was "...easier said than done; I saw almost only empty pages, at most on one or another page some scribbled Egyptian hieroglyphs that served him as a reminder but were entirely incomprehensible for me; for he played almost the entire principal part from memory, because, as almost always was the case, he had run sort of time to note it down properly." 

This is slop-translated after _Beethoven aux der Sicht seiner Zeitgenossen_ vol. II, ed., Kopitz et al (Munich: Henle 2009), p. 881 (i.e. the modern critical edition of Beethoven anecdotes which has replaced the canonic collections like Kerst, Leitzmann etc.). The footnote is interesting here: "In fact, the solo part of the Concerto had at that time been noted down, albeit not completely in both hands."
So, definitely not "for show", but by necessity, and also, Seyfried exaggerates hugely. For what it's worth, Beethoven's performance of the concerto did not please the reviewer, apparently he played sloppily.

Back to Mozart, and whether he played his concertos from memory: Some autographs of his Viennese concertos show some left-out passages with only the starting and end notes (K. 491, for instance). Others (k. 467) are written neatly but in obvious haste; the (few) corrections are always notated more or less legibly right on top of the wrong notes or right above the stave, easy-to-find in performance. The score of K. 466, as said before, contains some cue notes for the pedal fortepiano that would only have been of use for Mozart himself in his actual performance using that instrument. The impression is that these scores were used in performance, as opposed to being mere sketches on the one hand, or Stichvorlagen on the other.
During his last Viennese years, Mozart produced heaps of piano concertos for his own concerts, while also being up to his ears composing and producing operas, writing symphonies, chamber music, teaching, socializing, losing money, and so on. Since he did make the effort to note down his concerto solo parts, why would he also have wasted time memorising them? There was no time [motto for Mozart in general] He will have improvised most or all of his cadenzas, and nobody knows what de changed on the spur of the moment in his solos, of course. 
Improvisation is the cue here in any case. All the outstanding virtuosos of Mozart's and Beethoven's time improvised during their concerts--along with playing some or other composed work (solos, but more often songs, chamber movements or concerto movements). Of course, in improvisation, there was no music on the desk. But little in the documentation of performing conventions of the time points at a very widespread by-memory playing practice of composed music.

Tilman  

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Note:  opinions  expressed on HPSCHD-L are those of the  individual con-
tributors and not necessarily  those of the list owners  nor of the Uni-
versity of Iowa.  For a brief  summary of list  commands, send mail to
[log in to unmask]  saying  HELP .
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::