Mozart Piano

Sonatas 7 - 12, composed between 1777 and about 1783, mark a significant evolution with respect to the preceding ones: Mozart’s expressive world now takes on many new facets, and in Sonata K 310 it reaches dramatic depths of unprecedented intensity and sombreness. In the other sonatas, too, although seemingly “lighter”, we find an infinity of expressive approaches that had never previously appeared with such naturalness and variety of inflections. However, Mozart always succeeds in maintaining an admirable balance between seriousness and facetiousness, between playfulness and drama, with constant originality in his management of form.

AAM releases the final volume of an acclaimed project to record Mozart’s complete works for keyboard and orchestra. Fittingly, this final instalment includes three works that in various ways are valedictory: K595 is Mozart’s last completed keyboard concert, while K503 is the last concerto of his Viennese years. Louise Alder joins AAM and Robert Levin in an aria for solo soprano, solo keyboard and orchestra; Ch’io mi scordi di te? is a farewell to one of Mozart’s favourite singers, Nancy Storace.

The sublime results were worth the wait: after forty years of collaboration, Maria João Pires and Maestro Claudio Abbado record two of Mozart’s most beloved piano concertos for the very first time. Maria João Pires weaves dark, dramatic strains into the miraculous luminosity of the D minor Concerto No.20, K.466 with a simplicity that makes her Mozart supreme. She then bestows a glowing majesty upon Mozart’s last piano concerto, the serene Concerto No.27 K. 595 in B flat major, as only an artist of her gifts and profound experience can.

The first two volumes of Anne-Marie McDermott's Mozart piano concerto cycle with the Odense Symfoniorkester have received a superb critical reception. Volume 3 of the series hears the great American pianist in Mozart's final piano concerto, K. 595, paired with Mozart's sparkling, heartbreaking E-flat concerto, K. 449. The Odense Symfoniorkester is led by the German conductor, Sebastian Lang-Lessing.