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Mozart Piano Sonatas (complete)

In pedagogy these works are used as training ground for decoding, and learning reflex responses to, the standard figurations of Viennese Classical music, engendering a 'binary' attitude to articulation and pulse in performances that rarely move beyond 'received style'. This recording challenges these reception stereotypes by characterising these undervalued works foremost as abundantly colourful, and with intense nervous energy in faster movements.

Conceived for the delicate fortepiano, Mozart's sonatas use relatively sparse textures which are treated with excessive restraint on robust modern grand pianos, inevitably producing precious, saccharine sonorities that project the music as no more than 'antique' art objects.

The facile reading of Mozart as the epitome of elegance consistently engenders performing of the supposed beauty of the music rather than of the supposed character or feeling in the music.

These works are unique as a one-instrument cycle where Mozart cannot literally personify instruments in relation to each other – crucial to his other work. On the solo fortepiano he does this metaphorically through sensitive exploitation of characteristics of sonorities and registers. Since these characteristics are largely lost on the modern piano, it is only by referencing rich 19th-century means of voicing, pedalling, accentuation, articulation and 'singing' that one can render viscerally the instrumental and vocal textures and characters that Mozart conjures. Thus pianistic readings with considerably more dramatic potential become more possible than is usual. This broader palette enables possibilities of free association and spontaneity in direct contrast to the controlled reflexive, supposedly 'stylish', piano performances so common now.