It may seem surprising that a composer as thoroughly scrutinized as Mozart should have written piano works that are still unknown to most listeners, much less works that have remained unrecorded. This disc is billed as a collection of unknown piano pieces by Mozart -- a bit of an exaggeration, but there are indeed no fewer than five works here that have never been recorded before, and several of them are extremely unusual. Consider the opening Modulierendes Präludium (Modulating Prelude), in two parts that are only now recognized as part of the same work. It's a record of what an actual keyboard improvisation of the time would have been like, notated without bar lines. Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach and other composers set these down, but among Mozart's work this one is unique. The neglect of many of these pieces is due to Mozart's having left them unfinished; they were completed, often at Constanze Mozart's behest, after Mozart's death. The Sonata movement in G minor, K. 312, seems to date from the last year of Mozart's life; filled out with a recapitulation by an anonymous composer, it was published in 1805. It likely represents Mozart's final engagement with the piano sonata form, and it's fascinating, with tension generated by strange points of imitation within phrases and by a new malleability of thematic material; Mozart had perhaps come under the influence of Haydn's innovative late piano sonatas. Some of the fugues on the album date from Mozart's period of self-instruction in the art of counterpoint that followed his encounter with Bach's music in the early 1780s. The works on the album that are rare rather than unknown fit in well with the dreamy, improvisatory mood of several of the totally obscure pieces. The Adagio in B minor, K. 540, was recorded by Viennese School specialist
Walter Klien, among others, but here pianist
Annette Töpel emphasizes its fantasy-like qualities in a reading that is not just Adagio but Molto adagio. Mozart's almost freakish approach to the recapitulation in this sonata-form movement loses impact in her version -- it just creeps along too slowly. But the piece melds well with the rest of the program, consisting of fantasies, fugues, and sonatas.
Töpel resists the temptation to overplay the fantasy-like aspect of these works; though she uses a modern piano, she keeps things quiet. The album as a whole might be described as laid-back, but it seems to draw the listener into the world of Mozart's notebooks and compositional plans. Definitely recommended for Mozart enthusiasts.