First, and not intending to detract from this lavish release, I’m not sure why it is labeled World Premiere – perhaps due to its being the first employing the rare tangent piano. There are many other recordings of these early keyboard/violin sonatas of Mozart which were published in Paris, and about half of them feature the fortepiano rather than a modern grand. There is a EuroArts DVD of them performed by violinist Gil Shaham, with the audio only on a Canary Classics. Naxos, Channel Classics and Globe have versions using fortepiano, and there are some five and six-CD sets of Mozart’s complete violin-piano sonatas.
Perhaps the premiere element here is the very unusual sort of keyboard used. Fortepianos had two distinct registers, with separate hammers or a way to shift them to reveal different surfaces. One had just plain wood hammers – that was the “forte”. The other had a thin leather or cloth covering to mute the hammer against the strings. That was the “piano.” The tangent piano had an action more like a harpsichord, but it used small wooden rods propelled upward to hit the strings, rather than to pluck them. It had several tonal adjustments, including both covered and uncovered hammers, a lute stop like a harpsichord, and a way to move the hammers so that they could strike only a single string instead of two.
The timbre combination of the Baroque violin and the tangent piano is just perfect. Violinist Steck reports that she always felt the sound of most fortepianos was too muffled-sounding to match her violin, since most players use the “piano” register most of the time. The tangent piano is closer to the harpsichord in timbre and is more audible. Mozart modeled these sonatas on others that he found popular in Paris which gave more equal parts to the two instruments; earlier sonatas often defined the violin as just adding ornamentation or accompaniment to the main keyboard instrument. Also rather early works in his opera, they show a sophisticated development and begin to express some of the composer’s darker moods. He clearly had some, because it was about this time in Paris that his mother passed away. In fact, the passionate E Minor Sonata, K304, with its many contrasts and emotional character, was written at this specific time. Spaans uses the fortepiano sound, produced by slipping small pieces of leather under the strings, during changes from major to minor in this sonata. The A Major Sonata, K305, has a theme with six variations as the second of its two movements, and during the first variation Spaans raises the dampers in the treble entirely to create a fuller sound.
Interesting information about the tangent piano and keyboard instruments of the period in general is found in the printed interview with harpsichord builder Matthias Kramer. It is the last of several articles in the large booklet bound into this oversize (nearly ten inches tall) double-disc package. The articles are in English, French and German, and a two-part interview with the performers is printed, but also heard in stereo, in German, as the last band at the end of both discs. So the times of those two tracks – 25’ and 17’ – should be subtracted from the above disc times to arrive at the music lengths. This may be first talk feature I have heard on a SACD.
– John Sunier
