Among Mozart’s compositions, his piano sonatas are my favorite pieces. Like Bach, Haydn, and Beethoven, his solo piano melodies are variously characterized. Each sonata could sound very light, smooth, tranquil, harmonic, joyful and sometimes playful. For instance, my web blog’s background music (sonata k265) is interpreted playfully and joyfully by Daniel Barenboim. Of course, Mozart’s sonatas also have the marvelous power to quiet our personal moods as other composers’ do. So far, I have enjoyed listening to Mozart’s music, and at last, I feel so grateful to him. Go! Let’s appreciate Mozart’s piano sonatas, one after another!
Hallo Mozart!
When I am powerless or burn the midnight oil to study, I will listen to Mozart’s piano sonatas. Following the melody, throuth my heart, never am I alone. This week, K545 was together with me two exam nights.
Little Windy
For as long as I can remember, one of the deepest connections I have been able to make with my soul is through music – particularly in making my own music on my piano. I have never learnt to play a whole Sonata, but I have it in mind to one day learn Mozart’s K331 which climaxes with the emotional Rondo Alla Turca.
I was making an effor to play this piece last night, frustrated by my lack of technical ability and consistent practice. But I did get a sense in my soul of the strength of emotion it contained.
Chris Curnow
I think I started playing K. 333 after reading that Alfred Einstein (you read that right–the music critic Alfred Einstein, not Albert!) called this the “most perfect” of Mozart’s piano sonatas.
So sitting down to play this sonata you see a torrent of phrases each of which can be phrased slightly differently. A little more of an accent here, a little less stacatto there. Even if you’re not consciously playing the music differently, you can think of it in different ways each time you play it: sometimes I’ll notice a repetitive bass line more.
Playing K. 333 is a consciousness building exercise. You have to become aware of the line or arc, the symmetries, how bass and treble are playing off each other, what’s happening in alternating notes, how this phrase echoes one just played.
Bram Boroson
Interpretation versus translation: dynamic at odds with coherence, structure at odds with plot, literal… at odds with figurative. I’m frustrated beyond belief by trying to track down the old recording of Mozart’s 8th piano sonata I once had. I don’t know who it was on my old recording, and I can’t find it.
Everyone seems to have the Glenn Gould recording, everywhere I look, and Glenn Gould plays Mozart like a MACHINE. Oh, man, that sucks. Hearing him play it is like listening to a first grader with an IQ of 180 read Shakespeare… in a flat, obnoxious, and most emotionless monotone. Oh, sure, the words (notes) are all there, it’s in the right place, but there’s no conviction or implied meaning behind any of it! It’s way too fast, it’s all so f*ing loud and forceful.
Matthew
In some Mozart (e.g., K491, the G minor quintet) I hear terrifying darkness reconciled momentarily with the light. Eighteenth c. dualism — tumult & serenity, structure & improvization, grief & joy, mortality & life. I studied briefly with Russell Sherman in 1970.