COMPOSERS: Mozart
LABELS: Sony
ALBUM TITLE: Mozart
WORKS: Sonata in B, K358; Andante & Variations in D, k501; Sonata in F, K497; Fugue in G minor, K401; Orgelstück für eine Uhr in F minor, K608
PERFORMER: Yaara Tal, Andreas Groethuysen ((piano)
CATALOGUE NO: 8287 67363 2
As a composer of music for two
pianists at a single keyboard Mozart
stands second only to Schubert,
whose duets have already very
successfully been recorded by Yaara
Tal and Andreas Groethuysen. The
first volume of their complete Mozart
series features two great works that
exemplify very different approaches
to the medium: on the one hand, the
intimate, chamber-like Andante and
Variations, K501; and on the other
the symphonically-conceived Sonata
in F major, K497 – the grandest, and
perhaps the greatest, of all Mozart’s
keyboard works. The same CD
also includes the imposing F minor
Fantasia, K608, composed for a
mechanical organ, and surely the
model behind Schubert’s well-known
four-hands Fantasia in the same key.
Volume 2 branches out into
repertoire for two pianos, including
the irrepressibly effervescent D major
Sonata, K448, and the austere
Fugue in C minor, K426. Mozart
subsequently rescored the fugue for
strings, prefacing it with a new slow
introduction in Handelian style.
Tal and Groethuysen include the
introduction, in an arrangement by
Franz Beyer that works remarkably
well. Beyer has also completed some
fragmentary pieces, among them a
Larghetto and Allegro for two pianos
that only resurfaced in the 1960s.
Beyer’s version is far preferable
to the completion made shortly
after Mozart’s death by his friend
Maximilian Stadler, which relies too
much on sequential patterns.
Tal and Groethuysen are a
long-established duo, and there’s
some admirably polished playing
here. Particularly enjoyable are the
sparkling early Sonata K358 and
the Sonata for Two Pianos, though
the latter is marred by a mannerism
of elongating pauses at the end
of musical paragraphs. There are
more rhythmic eccentricities in the theme of the Variations K501, and
one may feel that the performance
of the F major Sonata doesn’t quite
plumb its depths. True, the opening
movement is a two-to-the-bar Allegro
di molto, but it needs more weight
than Tal and Groethuysen’s hectic
pace allows. However, these works
have been sadly neglected, and with
Peter Frankl and Tamás Vásáry’s
eloquent ASV recordings currently
unavailable, this newcomer more or
less has the field to itself. Certainly, it
has much to offer. Misha Donat