Mozart: Piano Sonatas, Vol. 5

Album review

SOMM Recordings’ survey of Mozart’s Piano Sonatas by Peter Donohoe nears its end with "Volume 5" featuring three works from very different periods of the composer’s life.

The earliest Sonata No. 3 in B-flat major, K. 281, from 1775, shows the 18-year-old composer in effervescent mood, nimbly drawing on French and Italian influences, with a cadenza composed by Donohoe for its Rondo finale. From January, 1788, the latest Sonata No. 15 in F major, K. 533/494, is an ingenious exercise in compromised creativity. Finding himself short of time, Mozart revised an earlier Rondo for the finale to two chromatically rich original movements caught between the Salzburg Serenades he was keen to leave behind and the aria-like coloratura he hoped would appeal to audiences.

A decade earlier, the Sonata No. 13 in B-flat major was composed in Paris as Mozart reeled from the death of his mother and the failure of his bid for success in the French capital. His only consolation had been an encounter with Johann Christian Bach, from whom Christopher Morley says in his authoritative booklet notes, he “learned balance and dialogue (the characteristic answering to an assertive masculine opening statement by a yielding, delicate feminine response…) and these qualities inform K. 333”.

This SOMM’s "Mozart Sonatas" survey has attracted superlative reviews. © SOMM