Robert Levin - Lecture on Mozart's personal forte piano | ECM Records

ECM New Series releases the first complete recording of W.A. Mozart’s piano sonatas on the composer’s own fortepiano (Anton Walter, 1782). This comprehensive, 7-CD boxed set also comprises unfinished fragments by the Austrian composer, here completed by American pianist and Mozart-scholar Robert Levin in consideration of Mozart’s idioms and the compositional mannerisms of his era. Robert Levin’s interpretations of the piano sonatas, too, are informed by the performance practice customs of the First Viennese School, including improvised elements and decorations in the repeats. The recordings are accompanied by a 100-page booklet featuring an extensive essay on the sonatas by Mozarteum-director and Mozart-expert Ulrich Leisinger as well as a performer’s note by Levin, manuscript-scores and more.

With the aim of a most authentic delivery, the entirety of the sonatas are performed on Mozart’s own fortepiano, whose limited width of roughly 100 cm combined with numerous other particular construction-related details make for a distinguished, woody sound that brings out the characteristics of Mozart’s sonatas with special transparency. The piano was built by Anton Gabriel Walter, most likely in 1782, and, as Mozart-expert and Mozarteum-director Ulrich Leisinger explains in the liner notes, “is noteworthy for a silvery sound rich in overtones, and for its surprisingly distinct bass notes, compared to those of a modern concert grand piano.” Mozart used this specific piano from 1785 on.

The box set is available here: https://ECM.lnk.to/MozartPianoSonatasID


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