COMPOSERS: Mozart
LABELS: Deutsche Harmonia Mundi
ALBUM TITLE: Mozart
WORKS: Piano Sonatas K279, 280, 281
PERFORMER: Robert Levin (fortepiano)
CATALOGUE NO: 82876 842372
Mozart’s earliest keyboard sonatas,
composed around the time of his 19th
birthday, are characterised by the
brilliance of their outer movements
and the romantic ardour of their slow
movements. The middle movement
of K281 is actually headed Andante
amoroso, and its main theme evokes
a pair of clarinets descending in a
warm chain of parallel thirds. When
the theme returns later, its elaborate
decoration gives us some idea of how
Mozart might have ornamented his
music when performing it himself.
Robert Levin has made something
of a speciality out of spontaneous
embellishments, and he substitutes
his own version of this moment. In
the final rondo he replaces Mozart’s
lead-in to the reprise with his own
improvised cadenza, and he goes to
town elsewhere in these sonatas, too
– imaginatively and convincingly.
Levin uses a copy of a piano
by Johann Andreas Stein, whose
instruments Mozart praised for the
effectiveness of their sustaining pedal.
Levin is actually quite sparing in his
use of pedal, and his slow movements
are a little unyielding, too. Mozart
himself maintained a strict pulse in
the bass-line (‘my left hand knows
nothing of rubato’, he once said), but
he must have allowed himself greater
freedom in unfolding the melody.
Maria João Pires is sometimes too
lingering in the Andantes, but she
imparts a glow of warmth that’s not
always apparent in Levin’s otherwise
stimulating performances of these
works. Misha Donat