Robert Levin - Lecture on Mozart's decorative repeats | ECM Records

“One of the central questions that confronts an interpreter of classic period music, is what the meaning really is of repeats. In the narrowest and most literal sense of course it says you go back and you play what you have just played before. But we know that an important element of 18th century performance was the decoration of repeats. And when we look at Mozart’s sonatas we can see that this issue is very much central to his way of conceiving things,” explains Robert Levin.

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.

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