Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Piano Sonatas (Mitsuko Uchida)

Information

Composer: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

CD1:

• (01-03) Piano Sonata No. 1 in C major, K. 279
• (04-06) Piano Sonata No. 2 in F major, K. 280
• (07-09) Piano Sonata No. 3 in B flat major, K. 281
• (10-12) Piano Sonata No. 4 in E flat major, K. 282
• (13-15) Piano Sonata No. 5 in G major, K. 283

CD2:

• (01-03) Piano Sonata No. 6 in D major, K. 284 - "Dürnitz"
• (04-06) Piano Sonata No. 7 in C major, K. 309
• (07-09) Piano Sonata No. 8 in A minor, K. 310
• (10-12) Piano Sonata No. 9 in D major, K. 311

CD3:

• (01-03) Piano Sonata No. 10 in C major, K. 330
• (04-06) Piano Sonata No. 11 in A major, K. 331 - "Alla Turca"
• (07-09) Piano Sonata No. 12 in F major, K. 332

CD4:

• (01-03) Piano Sonata No. 13 in B flat major, K. 333
• (04)      Fantasia in D minor, K. 397/385g
• (05-07) Piano Sonata No. 14 in C minor, K. 457
• (08)      Fantasia in C minor, K. 475
• (09)      Rondo in D major, K. 485
• (10)      Rondo in A minor, K. 511

CD5:

• (01-03) Piano Sonata No. 15 in F major
• (04)      Adagio in B minor, K. 540
• (05-07) Piano Sonata No. 16 in C major, K. 545 - "Sonata facile"
• (08-10) Piano Sonata No. 17 in B flat major, K. 570
• (11)      Eine kleine Gigue in G major, K. 574
• (12-14) Piano Sonata No. 18 in D major, K. 576 - "Trumpet"/"Hunt"
• (15)      Minuet in D major, K. 355/576b

Mitsuko Uchida, piano
Date: 1983-1989/2001
Label: Philips
http://www.deccaclassics.com/us/cat/4683562

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Review

ARTISTIC QUALITY: 9 / SOUND QUALITY: 9

Early in her international career, Mitsuko Uchida gained renown for playing Mozart, garnering acclaim for her complete recorded cycles of the composer’s concertos and sonatas for the Philips label. The sonatas were recorded between 1983 and 1987 and reissued as part of the label’s 1991 complete Mozart edition. Its present budget-priced incarnation is well worth your consideration. Connoisseurs of rarified Mozart pianism will be pleased to rediscover (as I did) the sparkling symmetry and ultra-precision of Uchida’s fingerwork, the fortepiano-like ping of her sonority, her impeccable tempo choices (the effortless flow between sections in the K. 284 and K. 311 sonatas’ variation movements, for instance), and finely judged balances between hands. The latter quality serves the central slow movements in the earlier sonatas, especially regarding Uchida’s subtle shaping of the left-hand Alberti bass accompaniments.

Cyclical Mozart sonata contenders like Lili Kraus, Andras Schiff, Klara Würtz, and Claudio Arrau might make more of the music’s operatic impulses and dramatic undercurrents (Schiff’s imaginative ornaments remain a strong selling point), however, that takes nothing away from Uchida’s subtle, pinpointed, and stylish mastery, which operates at higher levels of musical and technical refinement than we hear from Ingrid Haebler’s competing space-saving budget-box Mozart sonata cycle on the same label. In short, a solid thumbs up for bargain hunting Mozart lovers and, of course, for Uchida fans.

-- Jed Distler, ClassicsToday

More reviews:
BBC Music Magazine  PERFORMANCE: ***** / SOUND: ****
http://www.allmusic.com/album/mozart-the-piano-sonatas-mw0001842400
http://www.amazon.com/Mozart-Piano-Sonatas-MITSUKO-UCHIDA/dp/B00005QDYG

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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 1756 in Salzburg – 5 December 1791 in Vienna) was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. Mozart showed prodigious ability from his earliest childhood. Already competent on keyboard and violin, he composed from the age of five and performed before European royalty. Till his death in Vienna, he composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, operatic, and choral music. Mozart is among the most enduringly popular of classical composers, and his influence is profound on subsequent Western art music.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang_Amadeus_Mozart

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Mitsuko Uchida (born 20 December 1948 in Atami) is a Japanese naturalised-British classical pianist and conductor. Uchida moved to Vienna, Austria, with her diplomat parents when she was 12 years old and enrolled at the Vienna Academy of Music to study with Richard Hauser, and later Wilhelm Kempff and Stefan Askenase. She is an acclaimed interpreter of the works of Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Debussy and Schoenberg. Uchida has recorded a wide repertory with several labels, and won Gramophone Awards for her recordings of Mozart's Piano Sonatas and Schoenberg's Piano Concertos.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitsuko_Uchida

http://www.mitsukouchida.com/biography.php

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