Mozart Piano

Angela Hewitt’s voyage of discovery through Mozart’s piano sonatas is proving a joy, the works sounding newly minted in vital, alert accounts which respect their scale and sensibility while revealing influences of Mozart’s orchestral and concerto writing of the period.

Known for his intense, insightful interpretations of the classical repertoire, Rudolf Serkin was one of the great American pianists of the mid-century, and seldom was he more in his element than when playing Mozart. This new six-CD release unites for the first time fourteen Mozart concerto recordings made at the height of his career, between 1951 and 1977. His is not a raised-little-finger type of Mozart; it is rugged, has contour, and is a welcome relief from the pretty-pretty conceptions heard only too often , wrote Gramophone of a 1955 recording with the Columbia Symphony Orchestra and Alexander Schneider. With the same orchestra, Serkin is ideally matched (AllMusic Guide) with conductor George Szell; elsewhere he partners Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra, as well as Pablo Casals at the cellist-conductor s festival in Perpignan for No. 22 ( exultant and miraculous BBC Music Magazine). Recordings from the Marlboro Festival include the Concerto No. 10 for two pianos with his then-teenage son Peter Serkin.

International sensation Federico Colli continues his personal exploration of the music of Mozart with this second volume of works for solo piano. Colli opens his programme with the Adagio in B minor, K. 540, from 1788, toward the end of Mozart’s short life. The only piece on the album not to involve variation form, this Adagio instead adopts sonata form, and is an extremely rare case in Mozart’s output of its chosen key. The two sets of variations that follow (from the seventeen sets that Mozart composed) use a similar approach in their method of constructing variations on the theme – ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’ in the first instance, and Gluck’s smash hit ‘Les Hommes pieusement’ (or ‘Unser dummer Pöbel meint’) in the second. Colli concludes his programme with the rather extraordinary Sonata in A major, K. 311. Instead of the expected sonata form, the first movement is a theme with (six) variations. Following the second movement (a minuet and trio), Mozart finishes with a rondo – arguably one of his most famous pieces, the ‘Alla turca’.

Mozart’s great musical love was opera. This rather peremptory statement is also unquestionable. He confessed to his father that he would “cry” out of envy when he listened to an opera written by somebody else. Yet, the problem was that – at his time just as today – operas were very expensive, and one had to have an established fame and a foothold in the world of music in order to be commissioned one.