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Program Notes by Elizabeth Rich
In this second album of a chronological journey through Mozart’s sonatas, we reach the years 1777-1778. New, large and unprecedented features will appear in the landscape. We begin, however, with the work omitted from Volume 1 (for reasons of timing):
Sonata No. 5 in G Major, K. 283 (1774)
The impression is of ease, command and confidence in this fifth sonata by the 18-year-old Mozart. How lyrically contrasts in range and sound take form within the slender tonal compass. Interestingly, the octave passage in the first movement is used again in Mozart’s Cadenza for the G-Major Piano Concerto, K. 453 (1784) —ten years later—as though the key and the need for a connection in range pulled out an old memory. The sophistication of this Andante in C Major is that it seems simple—until the development section, where it shades and darkens. The final Presto (all three movements are in sonata form) is full of invention, freely and more brilliantly and easily realized for the instrument. No one had written like this before.
Sonata No. 7 in C Major, K. 309
In a letter to his father (dated Oct. 24th, 1777 from Augsburg), Mozart writes of performing various previously-composed works, and adds: “I then played—all of a sudden—a magnificent Sonata in C Major, out of my head, with a Rondo at the end, full of din and sound.” (Indeed, both first and last movement are brilliant—“full of din and sound”—though Mozart may have meant specifically the 32nd-note tremolos in the Rondo.) The improvisatory quality of these movements remains audible and vivid; it is useful to listen for it.
In Mannheim, Mozart was often at the home of Christian Cannabich, whose young daughter Rosa became his student. Mozart wrote the middle movement of K. 309 as a portrait of Rosa Cannabich. It is a tender Andante, in which the theme returns, ever more embellished. Here one notices that the original motive seems to say:
(But I may be reading this in.)
Mozart wrote to his father (Nov. 14th to 16th, 1777): “Three days ago, I began teaching Mlle Rose… We finished the first Allegro today. We shall have most trouble with the Andante, for it is full of expression and must be played actively with gusto, forte and piano, just as is written.” (The movement is copiously marked with “forte”s and “piano”s which alter with the more and more embellished appearances of the main theme.)
Sonata No. 8 in D Major, K. 311 (1777)
This is the other—and equally brilliant—sonata that Mozart wrote in Mannheim. Mozart counted these two Mannheim sonatas among his most difficult.
In the first movement, the first theme is avoided at the beginning of the recapitulation, to occur emphatically and wittily at the end of the movement, completing what was missing. The Andante is shorter and of a more innocent character than in K. 309 (some commentators have wondered if this could be Rosa Cannabich!) The outer movements, as in K. 309, display the newly brilliant use of the keyboard, including its middle register, well beyond that of the earlier sonatas; moreover, the left hand is a still more active partner to the right, less the accompanist.
Sonata No. 9 in A Minor, K. 310 (1778)
“Que s’est-il donc passé?”—what in the world happened? asks Saint-Foix of this A-Minor Sonata. He is witnessing its uniqueness. Perhaps “Minor” is the first clue; relatively few of Mozart’s works are in minor key—and only two of his nineteen piano sonatas.
We know that this work came out of the miserable summer of 1778. Mozart had journeyed to Paris, accompanied only by his mother. He wrote: “You have no idea what a dreadful time I am having here. Everything goes so slowly, and until one is well known—nothing can be done in the matter of composition.” And again (May 29th, 1778) to his father: “I am tolerably well, thank God, but my life often seems to be without rhyme or reason. I am neither hot nor cold—and take little joy in anything.” In Paris, Mozart was unhappily separated from Mannheim’s Aloysia Weber, with whom he was intensely in love. The Parisian nobility—the patrons he hoped for—ignored him utterly, as did musicians. Then, on July 3rd, Mozart’s mother—ill for only three weeks—died.
Something like the majestic, (“maestoso”) agitation of the first movement seems to occur again in the middle section of the large-scale Andante. The shadowy Presto is as if endlessly searching; its little section in A major is like an echo or vision of what might have been.
One could not have predicted or imagined this sonata either from Mozart’s previous work or out of the course of music history.
Mozart Complete Piano Sonatas, Volume 2 was recorded in 1999 and originally published by Connoisseur Society in 2000.