Various artists have given persuasive performances of Mozart's keyboard music on the fortepiano, but the series of recordings by German keyboardist Siegbert Rampe on the historically oriented MDG label does something rarer: Rampe attempts to perform Mozart's works on instruments resembling those that would have been used in the original performances. Thus the passionate Sonata in A minor, K. 310, that opens the program is played on a harpsichord -- quite a shock if you start the CD without reading Rampe's detailed notes beforehand, but, he explains, authentic for Paris in 1778 according to Mozart's own testimony. There's a hint of complaint in that testimony, for Mozart was beginning to think in pianistic terms by this point, but it's nevertheless interesting to hear the work played on a the sort of double-manual harpsichord whose builders strove mightily to enable the player to create dynamic effects. Rampe shows just what a variety of textures sheer articulation can create on a harpsichord, and if his version isn't going to change fundamental perceptions of the work, it's still highly recommended to anyone interested in the keyboard music of the era. As an entr'acte Rampe offers the very earliest music of Mozart's childhood, a set of pieces -- single utterances, really, analogous to the charm of the single words uttered by a linguistically precocious child -- written in his sister's notebook when he was all of three years old. Rampe's performance of these on a clavichord makes them come alive, almost puts the listener in the roomful of rapt aristocrats who gathered to hear the young prodigy. A different harpsichord is introduced for a slightly more ambitious early work, and the final Sonata in C major, K. 330, is played on a fortepiano -- one with a great deal of clanking action, but it nevertheless seems closely tied into the ways Mozart was expanding the vocabulary of keyboard music in the years around 1780. A fascinating excursion into the world of historical keyboard performance for any interested listener.
© TiVo