After an abortive set on Harmonia Mundi some years earlier, pianist
Robert Levin returns with a complete cycle of
Mozart's piano sonatas. The intervening years have given him time for further research and reflection that show up in these
ECM recordings, which made best-seller charts in the fall of 2022 despite a hefty list price and a sometimes bristly approach.
Levin was also allowed this time around to play
Mozart's own fortepiano, a 1782
Walter model, and this is one of the main attractions here. The instrument resides at the Salzburg Mozarteum, and few historical pianos have been so well cared for. It is a remarkable instrument, with sharp differentiations of texture between its registers and enough of an edge to deliver
Levin's basic approach that avoids the conception of
Mozart as a delicate flower and instead stresses rhythmic tension, opera-like drama, and the new ability of the keyboard to mimic orchestral effects in works like the Piano Sonata in D major, K. 284. He is exceptionally alert to the rhythmic undercurrents in the outer movements, and a piece like the opening Allegro of the Piano Sonata in G major, K. 283, hardly one of
Mozart's most popular keyboard works, here receives an unusually sharp, tense performance.
Levin leans into the ambition of the later sonatas, with an operatic, Beethovenian Fantasia in C minor-Piano Sonata in C minor pair and crisp readings of the ultra-concise final group. Another innovation here is the heavy use of ornamentation of repeated material. This is justified mostly with reference to procedures documented in the music of
C.P.E. Bach, which does not necessarily provide definitive evidence when it comes to
Mozart. Listener reactions to what
Levin does may vary, but overall, this is absolutely distinctive
Mozart, backed by a good deal of thought and scholarship. ~ James Manheim