Mozart's Piano Sonatas
Mozart's Piano Sonatas
Gramophone Choice
Piano Sonatas Nos 1-18. Fantasia, K475
Mitsuko Uchida (pf)
Philips 468 356-2PB5 (5h 25' · DDD) Buy from Amazon
By common consent, Mitsuko Uchida is among the leading Mozart pianists of today, and her recorded series of the piano sonatas won critical acclaim as it appeared and finally won Gramophone Awards in 1989 and 1991. Here are all the sonatas, plus the Fantasia in C minor, K475, which is in some ways a companion piece to the sonata in the same key, K457. This is unfailingly clean, crisp and elegant playing that avoids anything like a romanticised view of the early sonatas such as the delightfully fresh G major, K283. On the other hand, Uchida responds with the necessary passion to the forceful, not to say Angst-ridden A minor Sonata, K310. Indeed, her complete series is a remarkably fine achievement, comparable with her account of the piano concertos. The recordings were produced at Henry Wood Hall in London and offer excellent piano sound. Don’t be put off by critics who suggest that these sonatas are less interesting than some other Mozart compositions, for they’re fine pieces written for an instrument that he himself played and loved.
Additional Recommendations
Piano Sonatas Nos 1-18. Fantasia, K475
Daniel-Ben Pienaar (pf)
Avie AV2209 (4h 48' · DDD) Buy from Amazon
One factor strikes immediately: there is not a whiff of bygone reverential, even obsequious attitudes to Mozart that still cast faint shadows among some pianists. Pienaar is therefore ‘modern’ in his discernment of the music. But – how about this for a 19th-century throwback? – Pienaar de‑synchronises his hands, though selectively so.
Effects are clear in, for example, the Fantasia, K475. The fractional hiatus between left and right underpins the harmony in the first and third bars. The staggered articulation is no mere anachronism. It becomes a subtle aspect of a range of expression Pienaar uses to penetrate music ‘very rich in activity, rich in personality and topoi’. Point and purpose explained. And totally disdained is ‘the facile stereotype of Mozart as the epitome of elegance’.
Of the utmost importance in conveying convictions is Pienaar’s strong, independent left hand. It tightens harmonic tension and supports rather than accompanies treble lines. Be it high drama or lyrical contemplation, Pienaar scans phrases with a fluidity that releases the music from rhythmic inertia. But as his performance of the Alla turca Sonata, K331, shows, technique isn’t allowed to edge ahead of emotional and intellectual depth. A much-mistreated piece emerges in a different light. Pienaar pays attention to the oft-forgotten grazioso element in the first movement, eschews metrical stiffness in the Minuet, yields to the Trio’s distinctive flow and refuses to turn the March into a janissary bash. Extend such thoughtful, profound probity to the whole set and you have interpretations where within the letter critically observed, a numinous potency breaks free. Momentous Mozart.
Piano Sonatas Nos 8 & 15. Courante, K399. Gigue, K574. Rondo, K511. March, K408/1
Richard Goode (pf)
Nonesuch 7559 79831-2 (60' · DDD) Buy from Amazon
A Mozart programme such as this, which includes two of the greatest sonatas and the A minor Rondo, leaves absolutely no margin for error or insufficiency, nor indeed for anything at all approximate or generalised. It’s given to very few to play Mozart as well as Richard Goode, who seems to pitch the rhetoric just right and sustain an ideal balance of strength and refinement.
It’s quite big playing, and the range of sonority is appropriate to the A minor Sonata, K310, in particular; no other recent recording realises so well the sharp contrasts, the cross-cut abutments of dynamics, which are such a striking feature in all three movements. Goode has a characteristic touch of urgency that has nothing to do with impetuosity or agitation of the surface, but rather with carrying the discourse forward and making us curious about what will happen next. In the presto finale, where Brendel (Philips) is choppy and rather slow, Goode is exciting and articulate, wonderfully adept at getting from one thing to another.
There’s little to choose between these players in the composite F major Sonata, K533. Brendel is at his finest in the dark, far-reaching middle movement; both of them relish the challenge of characterising the multifariousness of the first; Goode is especially convincing in the last movement. He gives you the overview, too, often powerfully. While admiring the flux of intensities, dynamics, shapes and colours he sets before you in the Rondo, you might wonder three-quarters of the way through whether the totality was going to achieve enough weight. But the coda is to come – passionate and desolate, a close without parallel in Mozart’s instrumental music – and at moments such as this you can be assured that Goode will surprise and certainly not disappoint. The shorter pieces, enterprisingly chosen, set off the great works admirably. Exceptional sound throughout – like the playing, quite out of the ordinary run.
Keyboard Sonatas – Nos 15 & 17. Fantasia, K475. Variations on ‘Unser dummer Pöbel meint’, K455
Kristian Bezuidenhout (pf)
Harmonia Mundi HMU90 7497 (72' · DDD) Buy from Amazon
Keyboard Sonatas – Nos 10 & 14. Adagio, K540. Rondos – K485; K511
Kristian Bezuidenhout (pf)
Harmonia Mundi HMU90 7498 (71' · DDD) Buy from Amazon
Written for an Anton Walter fortepiano and played on a 1987 reproduction – by Derek Adlam – of a model similar to one Mozart owned. Does that make these performances authentically Mozartian? Peter Walls (Victoria University, New Zealand) believes that ‘getting as near as we can – literally – to the intended sound world of works from the past is part and parcel of engaging with their essence’. But the essence is only as distilled through the recreative intuition of a performer. Kristian Bezuidenhout offers a personal distillation that is impressively absorbing.
So indeed are the timbre and sonority of the instrument. The hair-trigger transients of a fortepiano, so right for communicating drama, harmonic progressions and abrupt shifts of mood, are as expected. But, perhaps unexpectedly, an expressive singing line is to the fore too because Bezuidenhout is consummately artistic in his use of knee levers for the moderator and sustaining mechanisms that govern tone colour. The Fantasia, K475, of varying moods, exemplifies his whole approach.
For HC Robbins Landon, Mozart produced his ‘most troubled, alarming and even dangerous music’ during black moods, ‘baleful pieces’ in minor keys, three of which are on the second disc. Troubled they certainly are; and Kristian Bezuidenhout does try to fathom the inner recesses of a disquieted mind. The fast transients of his fortepiano (here a Paul McNulty copy of an Anton Walter, c1802) lay bare a ‘moodscape’ of A minor bleakness in the opening statement of the Rondo, K511. The moments of light from major keys are just that. Starkness predominates, as it also does in the Adagio, K540. But here Bezuidenhout, perhaps surmising impending tragedy too, introduces a hushed poignancy to the last page of the piece.
Bezuidenhout is light years removed from a pre-war belief that Mozart’s music contained ‘the essence of childhood and the fragrance of simplicity’ (Alec Rowley). These interpretations – excellent to outstanding – are interpretations of today.
‘The Gulda Mozart Tapes’ – Piano Sonatas – Nos 1-5, 9, 10, 12, 13 & 16
Friedrich Gulda (pf)
DG 477 6130GM3 (3h 37' · ADD · Recorded live 1980) Buy from Amazon
Friedrich Gulda made a series of Mozart sonata recordings shortly before playing all the sonatas in three cycles of concerts during February 1981. They remained unissued during the pianist’s lifetime and survived only on cassette dubs from the presumably lost mastertapes. Their first CD appearance adds up to an absorbing listening experience, once you get past the inevitable hiss plus patches of flutter and signal overload.
The close microphone placement shrouds Gulda’s Bösendorfer with a harpsichord-like patina that also evokes the fuzzy ping of a vintage Wurlitzer electric piano, yet the pianist’s wide dynamic range and hard-hitting accents are anything but emasculating. Indeed, Gulda’s Mozart positively rocks, because it’s mostly about rhythm. It’s not about Gieseking’s rippled symmetry, Schiff’s ornaments (although Gulda’s no slouch in this department), Krauss’s angular harmonic stresses or Arrau’s operas in miniature. Gulda’s unswerving, atomically steady tempi and occasionally down-beat oriented phrasing never sound mechanical, for two reasons. One, his inner rhythm always conveys a sense of swing in that it’s firmly grounded yet forward-moving. Two, Gulda’s left hand is his trump card. Listen anywhere, really, and notice how much variety the pianist gleans from the composer’s endless Alberti basses, how he brings out important melodic elements within the figurations, or how he gets the most dramatic (as opposed to merely theatrical) mileage out of signpost bass octaves without a trace of contrivance or Gouldian exaggeration.
At long last, we have Mozart piano sonata slow movements that you can slow-dance to, if that’s your desire. More and more details rise to the surface with each rehearing, although it’s best to absorb Gulda’s Mozart in small doses – just one or two sonatas at a time. A stimulating release.
