Mozart: Rondos and Sonatas

Album review

Fortepianist Jerome Hantaï (brother of Pierre) recorded this album in early 2020, just before all hell broke loose, and the Mirare label is to be commended for not letting it get lost in the shuffle. It is unusual in several ways, not least in the recently restored anonymous instrument Hantaï plays. Fortepianos tend to fall into the gentle step-away-from-the-harpsichord type and the muscular ones that look forward to Beethoven's instruments, but this one falls somewhere in between, with a strong but not overly percussive sound. Hantaï deploys it in smooth, elegant readings of the two Mozart sonatas here, works in which the fortepiano really came into its own, as well as in a group of fairly unusual rondos. The Rondo in A minor, K. 511, is a chromatic, debilitated piece almost always played as proto-Romantic Mozart, sometimes in an extreme way; Hantaï goes counter to type with a straightforward reading, and who is to say he is wrong? The Rondo K. 494, usually played as the finale to the unfinished Piano Sonata in F major, K. 533, but taking on a different flavor here by itself, and K. 485 are also unusual, but rarest of all is the Allemande from the Suite for piano in C major, K. 399. This unfinished work was an exercise in Handelian style written by Mozart under the influence of Vienna's Baron van Swieten and his collection of Baroque manuscript works, and it is fascinating; it doesn't sound much like Handel at all beyond its French dance rhythm, and Mozart seems to have treated it as an excuse to experiment with chromatic harmony. It is truly one of a kind and is not often heard. This is an intriguing Mozart fortepiano recording with something to offer even for those with large collections of period Mozart performances.

© James Manheim /TiVo