COMPOSERS: Mozart
LABELS: RCA
WORKS: Piano Sonatas K279, K280 & K457; Fantasias K397 & K475; Rondo K485
PERFORMER: Alicia de Larrocha (piano)
CATALOGUE NO: 09026 60453-2 DDD
This is one of the best discs of selected keyboard works by Mozart to have been issued in the wake of the recent bicentenary – the best I have heard since András Schiff’s recital on an early piano. Larrocha plays a modern grand, for which neither apology nor defence is needed. She performs this music as if totally at ease with its style: the playing is full of bright intelligence and graceful expression without being prettified. Perhaps the C minor Fantasy could have more intensity – its quieter passages are almost sleepy – but the sonata in the same key, which Mozart published with it, has a sense of strong feeling dignified by classical objectivity. Adrian Jack
Mozart: Piano Sonatas K279, K280 & K457; Fantasias K397 & K475; Rondo K485
This is one of the best discs of selected keyboard works by Mozart to have been issued in the wake of the recent bicentenary – the best I have heard since András Schiff’s recital on an early piano. Larrocha plays a modern grand, for which neither apology nor defence is needed. She performs this music as if totally at ease with its style: the playing is full of bright intelligence and graceful expression without being prettified.
Our rating
5
Published: January 20, 2012 at 2:30 pm