As I mentioned in my review of Volume 5 in this series, I was under the impression that Volume 4 completed the series, so I guess I need to fire off an email to Channel Classics and get a clarification, because here we have Volume 6! Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining – nothing could be further from the truth, and when the winning formula is as remarkably good as this one has been, well, too much is never enough! Once again Gary Cooper and Rachel Podger give us thrillingly good performances of a mixture of early and mature sonatas composed by Mozart for keyboard and violin.
The two movement Sonata in G major (KV 27) takes us all the way back to Mozart at 10 years old, and the work is more keyboard-heavy than his later compositions in the oeuvre, which would distribute the load a bit more democratically between players. The work is perpetually sunny, and quite enjoyable despite its relatively simplistic writing for both instruments. Still, the relative complexity of the keyboard runs in the second movement Allegro (probably originally written for harpsichord) are impressively good, especially considering they came from the pen of a ten-year-old! Two of the more mature works contained in this collection, the F major Sonatas (KV 376 and 377) come from a series of six that Mozart dedicated to his student and frequent performing partner Josepha Auernhammer. There’s a famous passage in one of his letters to Leopold Mozart, in which the younger Mozart describes her as “perfectly hideous, but she plays like a dream!” Apparently, the young woman was in love with Mozart, but he did not return her affection; he did, however, call upon her frequently for performances, and there are numerous instances in the Viennese press that expound on her talents as a musician and composer in her own right. Although both works were composed in F major, they’re strikingly different; KV 376 is upbeat and cheerful from start to finish, while KV 377 displays a diverse array of moods. Alfred Einstein referred to the third movement minuet as “balm for a wounded soul.”
As with the previous installments of this excellent series, the sound quality from Channel Classics is breathtakingly good; especially with the multichannel SACD layer, you really get the impression that Rachel Podger and Gary Cooper are in the room with you! Very highly recommended – it doesn’t get much better than this.
— Tom Gibbs
