Classical CD Reviews
MOZART: Sonatas for fortepiano and violin - Petra Mullejans, violin/ Kristian Bezuidenhout, fortepiano - Harmonia mundi
A splendid performance of Mozart keyboard and violin sonatas played on period instruments.
Published on August 01, 2009
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MOZART: Sonatas for fortepiano and violin - Petra Mullejans, violin/ Kristian Bezuidenhout, fortepiano - Harmonia mundi HMU 907494, 72:45 *****:
It is probably hard for us to understand just how revolutionary and difficult Mozart's music must have sounded to the average listener or amateur musician during the few years of his maturity. His genius had manifested itself at an early age and his musical growth had been so rapid that his creative coming-of-age can effectively be dated as age 17. 1773 featured the composition of his Piano Concerto No. 5 in D major K. 175 and the Symphony No. 25 in G minor K. 183. Both works already feature Mozart's characteristic emotional depth, wide dramatic range, stylistic clarity and balance accompanied by a remarkable transparency of texture, and a cosmopolitan sophistication that would become more pronounced over the next few years. He had advanced well beyond his contemporaries with only the 41 year old Haydn producing work of a comparable greatness.
Mozart wrote his first Sonata for Violin and Keyboard in C major K. 6 in 1762 at the age of six. Essentially a piano sonata with violin accompaniment, this remained the genre most often played by amateur musicians for home consumption. Mozart produced several juvenile examples of this light entertainment music before setting the genre aside for many years.
Arriving in Mannheim in 1778 and under the beneficial influence of the astonishing musicians he heard there, Mozart once again returned to the genre. He produced a set of six violin sonatas which were issued in November 1781. The Sonata in C major K. 296 is the first of the set numerically listed in the Kochel Catalogue. Right from the start we inhabit a new world. The expansive first movement is orchestrally inspired with a powerful first theme that is answered by more intimate interplay between the two instruments. Although the piano is still central to the musical dialogue, the violin engages in frequent thematic exposition where it is in musical control. The piano is now only first amongst equals. The second movement is an Andante of great beauty that displays Mozart's rapidly maturing dramatic gifts. The piece closes with a vivid Rondeau.
Violinist Petra Mullejans and Pianist Kristian Bezuidenhout use period instruments with Bezuidenhout playing a reconstruction of an Anton Walter fortepiano, Mozart's own keyboard. Both musicians produce a rich full tone from their instruments, playing with great delicacy and taste. Additionally they are always ready to indulge in the deepest drama and emotion when called for by the music.
The beautiful Sonata in G major K. 379, known as the 'one-hour' sonata because it was composed in a single hour on the night before its first performance in Vienna in 1781, is expressively played. The opening movement is an Adagio of uncommon depth and beauty, unusual for the period and with an emotional and dramatic profundity that belongs to the Romantic era. A high-spirited Allegro and a spacious Theme and Variations conclude this brilliant piece. Both musicians give splendid performances. The Sonata in B-flat major K. 454, composed in 1784, is a piece that showcases Mozart's increasing theatrical gifts, especially in the harmonically daring and richly textured central Andante. In both these works Mullejans and Bezuidenhout exhibit a knack for Mozartean performance. The disc also contains Six Variations on "Au bord d'une fontaine" ('Helas, j'ai perdu mon amant') K. 360/374b (Alas I lost my lover), a work written early in 1781 when Mozart first arrived in Vienna and which he probably used as a point of departure for improvisational flights of fancy that were about to make him famous.
This CD is an example of how historically informed performance practice when combined with talent and skill can produce superior results. Both musicians embrace Mozart's style and grace while the gritty sound of their period instruments serves to recreate a sense of the music's history and place of origin. The recording by Harmonia mundi's engineers is crystal clear and sonically bright with each instrument allowed to breathe in its own space. Nice stereo imaging makes listening with closed eyes a lot of fun to do. The sound of the fortepiano is especially well captured, without that annoying clatter that some recordings are undone by. This is a lovely CD.
- - Mike Birman
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