Mozart Edition / Volume 17: The Complete Piano Sonatas / Mitsuko Uchida

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Mitsuko Uchida, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

The folks at Philips made another fine choice when they selected
Mitsuko Uchida’s recordings of Mozart’s “Complete Piano Sonatas,”
as a part of their “Complete Mozart Edition” project. These
recordings were made at Henry Wood Hall in London, between
1983 and 1987.

This five CD set also included the “Fantasia in C Minor, KV475.”
Mozart composed these works in distinct groups, beginning in
either 1774 or 1775, and completing them by 1789. In my
opinion, they showcase his development as a composer as
effectively as any of the music he wrote in other genres, and
he literally excelled in ALL genres.

Madame Uchida’s performances were marked by impeccable
taste and a wonderful sense of touch. I also liked the way that
the Sonatas were more or less chronologically arranged on the
discs; the better to chart Mozart’s compositional development.

The accompanying booklet had essays in English, German,
French, and Italian which were written by different authors, as
opposed to the traditional practice of printing only one essay,
with multiple translations. It’s too bad that I’m only fluent in
English, as I’d like to know what the other writers had to say!

Without having heard many of the other complete sets of
these Sonatas, I’m still willing to bet that I could do worse
than this Grammy Award winning set. I highly recommend it,
as a worthwhile purchase.

The Mozart Edition, Volume 16: Piano Duets

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Ingrid Haebler, Jörg Demus, Ludwig Hoffmann, Mitsuko Uchida, Paul Badura-Skoda, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

At a total of 10 works, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s music
for two pianos and for piano four hands represents a very
small percentage of his keyboard output, but it is
nonetheless significant. “Music for Two Pianos,
Piano Duets” is a two-CD set released under the Philips
label. At a running time of just under two and one-half
hours, these two discs contain all of Mozart’s compositions
for this genre which have survived. They were recorded
between 1971 and 1978, and are part of the
“Complete Mozart Edition” of 1991.

As with other genres of works by Mozart (1756-1791),
these pieces span a good part of his compositional career,
beginning with the “Sonata in C for Piano Duet K19D” of
1765 and ending with the “Sonata in C for Piano Duet K521”
from 1787. The earliest pieces are naturally very “facile,”
demonstrating the technical competence, if not the genius
of his mature works. As such, I found the aforementioned
“Sonata K19D” and the “Two Piano, Four Hands Sonatas
K381 and K358,” completed between 1772 and 1774,
to be “nice and pleasant,” but neither engaging nor compelling.

I immediately recognized the opening bars of the
“Sonata in D for Two Pianos K448.” However, I don’t
believe it displays the sheer mastery found in Mozart’s
later four-hand piano music from 1786-1787, such as the
“Sonata in F for Piano Duet K497″ or the “Sonata for Piano
Duet in C K521,” as well as his “Andante and Five
Variations in G for Piano Duet K501.” To my ears, these
three pieces are his greatest works for this configuration.

Despite the advantages obtained from a note perspective
by using four hands instead of the usual two, I don’t feel
that Mozart’s four-hand music is equal to the greatest
of his two-hand Sonatas.

Of course, these are solid performances of these works
from Ingrid Haebler (1926 – ) and Ludwig Hoffmann
(1925-1999), as would be expected from all of the
participants on this huge Philips set, but I didn’t find
them to be at the level of Mitsuko Uchida’s (1948 – )
performances of the complete “Mozart Sonatas,”
a five-CD set also released by Philips.

I should mention that the set I heard also included
a reconstruction by Paul Badura-Skoda (1927 – ) of
Mozart’s “Larghetto and Allegro in E Flat for Two Pianos,
which he performed with Jörg Demus (1928 – ).

This handsome box set includes the usual accompanying
booklet with essays in four languages, photos and
engravings, making it a nice purchase for Mozart
“completists.”