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“A triumph… Never had Mozart sounded more profound, more complex
or more pertinent to the present.” – Musical America
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Program Notes by Elizabeth Rich
The chronological performance of Mozart’s sonatas gives us the opportunity to follow Mozart’s journey as composer. The familiar relates in a new way to the unfamiliar; change speaks out—but then so do surprising connections, even prefigurings. One hears the unparalleled in context. Character and mood stand out and finally every sonata is—more than ever—different.
The sonatas on this first disc are the first piano sonatas written by Mozart, written in hope of publication and for his use as traveling virtuoso in search of employment. Many improvised sonatas and sonata movements preceded them; Mozart was a—perhaps the—great improviser. He was 19 when he wrote these sonatas; three years later, he was to give the astonishing dramatic opera, Idomeneo, to the world.
Sonata No. 1 in C Major, K. 279
The first movement is the most improvisatory in these sonatas; the high A appearing on the first beat of the second measure is reapproached and integrated throughout the movement with inspired freedom and freshness of invention. Alfred Einstein writes: “The tones of the instrument sound in direct response to Mozart’s imagination; this is how he must have played when he was in the vein.” The Andante, like an aria in sonata form, has carefully marked fortes and pianos. The final Allegro—the third movement in a row in sonata form—shows the rougher kind of humor and the “surprises” we associate with Haydn.
Sonata No. 2 in F Major, K. 280
In contrast to the first sonata, there is greater extremity: the outer movements, Allegro assai and Presto, are faster; the slow movement, Adagio, is slower. The opening material of the first movement quickly and daringly covers a wide range. One of the movement’s compositional tasks will be to make this convincing, to fill in the skips. Haydn’s F-Major Sonata, Hob.— Verz. XVI: 23, appeared in 1773. It seems clear that Mozart was writing a homage to it, and most openly in the beautiful Adagio: in F minor, like Haydn’s, and with the prominent minor-second motive, D-flat, C, like his. What Mozart absorbed he transformed; his Adagio is sparer in texture, shorter and less embellished than Haydn’s. It already points to Mozart’s own late A-Minor Rondo for piano, K. 511, and to the forlorn Pamina’s aria “Ach, ich fühl’s” from The Magic Flute, written in the last year of Mozart’s life. In the Presto, the improviser and natural pianist in Mozart leads. Cuthbert Girdlestone suggests, in his book on Mozart’s piano concertos, that triple meter (as in the first and last movements of this sonata), in its underlying instability, is allied to a more urgent or personal expressiveness.
Sonata No. 3 in B-flat Major, K. 281
The first movement’s sonata-allegro form is of great clarity; first and second theme are distinctly different in character. The development section has a more typical development-section quality to our ears than the fantasy-like C-Major or the shorter F-Major Sonata developments. The Andante amoroso is like an opera duet; its thirds and tenths and repetitions are the singing of two voices. The third movement marks the first time Mozart uses the Rondo form in the piano sonatas. Einstein calls it “Mozart at his most characteristic and individual.” It is a younger sister to the B-flat Major Rondo of the sonata K. 333.
Sonata No. 4 in E-flat Major, K. 282
The tempo titles of the movement show how unusual this sonata is in Mozart’s oeuvre. The unique and grave first-movement Adagio is in sonata form. It is followed by two minuets, da Capo, and a very short concluding allegro—in sonata form—close to Haydn in spirit.
Sonata No. 5 in G Major, K. 283
(appears in Vol. 2)
Sonata No. 6 in D Major, K. 284
With the sixth sonata we come to a new place; we do not fully know why. The first five sonatas were written in Salzburg and the sixth in Munich. This D-Major is dedicated to a Baron Durnitz; Einstein suggests that the baron may have suggested “something different, more brilliant, in the ‘French style’—or Mozart himself must have had a personal or musical experience that suddenly lifted him to a new or higher level.” Tellingly, seventy measures of this first movement exist in an earlier version—a version thinner, less orchestral, similar to the style of the five preceding sonatas. (Some measures of this early version are reproduced on the 2000 CD cover.)
This sonata is more than twice as long as any preceding it. It is still more richly written for the instrument, so that the first movement sounds orchestral. In the second movement—its title, Rondeau, emphasizing the French influence—the theme returns more embellished each time. The last movement is a theme with twelve variations, the first appearance of this form in a Mozart sonata, as well as the first appearance of a variation in the minor in Mozart variations. The theme has “irregular barring” and contains a silence; this silence is filled in each variation according to the particular character of each. The penultimate variation is an embellished Adagio and the last variation changes meter and tempo as is customary: it is Allegro and in 3/4. The sonorousness, the way each variation grows from the preceding, the richness of their range are unprecedented. In this richness and in the brilliance and size of the entire sonata, it resembles a concerto.
Mozart Complete Piano Sonatas, Volume 1 was recorded in 1998 and originally published by Connoisseur Society in 2000.