Mozart: The Complete Piano Sonatas – Artur Balsam

Description

This series of Mozart’s sonatas for solo piano contains eighteen works – all but one included in the excellent edition prepared by Nathan Broder and published by ‘Theodore Presser Company. (The F-Major sonata omitted in the recordings, K. 547a, consists of two movements arranged — by Mozart? — from other works plus an original opening Allegro; they are not essential.)

Eighteen sonatas may not seem a formidable contribution when one considers Mozart’s vast total output of well over 650 compositions. Yet, of all the editions of Mozart’s works printed before his death as high a proportion as nearly one-third was of his clavier music, a fact as revealing of Mozart’s reputation as of the importance of sonatas in the commercial world of 18th-century music.

During the second half of the century the sonata had, as it does today, different social and musical functions: a primary vehicle for domestic music making; material for teaching purposes; display pieces for professional musicians, that is, for concert use, with the understanding that it was generally private, court performances rather than our familiar solo recitals; most common means for a composer to achieve a reputation through publication. All these play a large role in Mozart’s career, principally because he was before the public as a keyboard virtuoso from his earliest years.

For this reason and because both the sonata and the piano itself were undergoing dramatic development in the latter part of the century, these works remain important documents without which the sonatas of Haydn’s maturity and Beethoven’s youth would have been somewhat different.