COMPOSERS: Mozart
LABELS: Regis (all)
ALBUM TITLE: Mozart
WORKS: A minor Rondo; B minor Adagio; Sonata movement in G minor; Sonata movement in B flat major
PERFORMER: Martino Tirimo (piano) - (all 3 CDs)
CATALOGUE NO: RRC 1257 / RRC 2072 / RRC 1256
The London Chelsea Sketchbook is
a remarkable collection of 39 short
keyboard pieces which the eightyear-
old Mozart composed for his
own amusement whilst his family
was resident in England during the
mid-1760s. Although the music is
fluent and covers a varied range of
moods, it is still somewhat limited
in expression rendering selective
listening to a few works far more
desirable than a trawl through the
complete cycle.
A similar degree of quality control
should be applied to the two-disc
set of early works and lesser-known
piano pieces. True, there are some
real gems such as the marvellous
Sonata movements in G minor and
B flat major, and Mozart’s fascination
with Baroque music inspires some
unexpected results in the unfinished
Suite and the Modulating Prelude. But
one can easily live without the rather
monotonous sequence of Minuets,
many of which have been recorded
here for the first time.
Fortunately, the disc of Encores and
Premières contains a sufficient crop of
undisputed masterpieces, including
the A minor Rondo and B minor
Adagio, to keep one’s spirits up. In
these particular works Martino
Tirimo produces a beautifully velvet
and cantabile right hand, though
there are occasions where the warmly
recorded Steinway D piano sounds
a little heavy especially in the lower
registers. Regrettably this aspect
of Tirimo’s playing seems more
pronounced in the Dances and
Minuets where there is a tendency
to sacrifice grace and elegance for
an unnecessary degree of harshness
of tone, and in the contrapuntal
and Baroque-influenced pieces the
pianist is sometimes disappointingly
mechanical in his execution of the
melodic line.
Currently very few rival recordings
detach the shorter pieces from the
sonatas and variations, and for this
reason Tirimo’s survey fills a useful
gap. However if you feel that some of
this repertory is better suited to the
fortepiano, Ronald Brautigam’s cycle
on BIS offers a more consistently
expressive experience. Erik Levi
