MOZART: PIANO SONATAS, VOL.1 – ORLI SHAHAM Canary Classics

“Mozart’s three B-flat sonatas are so varied and different in their inventive brilliance. Each has a truly individual and distinct voice, yet together they stand on a timeline that clearly maps Mozart’s development from his late teens to full maturity.” Orli Shaham

Volume 1 in Orli Shaham’s documentation of Mozart’s eighteen piano sonatas complete. She possesses an enviable reputation as a Mozartean with press and critics dwelling on her ‘thrillingly expressive’ approach matched with ‘technical virtuosity and deftness’ culminating in ‘performances that connects directly with an audience’.

This is her first solo Mozart offering and follows her recording the Mozart Violin Sonatas with brother violinist Gil Shaham for Canary Classics (CC-01) and on video for EuroArts along with her acclaimed release last year of Mozart Piano Concertos, conducted by David Robertson and the St. Louis Symphony.

Mozart’s singing line and its translation to the piano has served as Orli Shaham’s constant guide in her interpretations of Mozart. While analysis form, harmony, rhythm and phrasing have played an important part Orli Shaham is adamant that the vocal nature of each sonata is paramount. K.333 starts out as would Mozart’s operas, as a single melodic idea as Orli Shaham says, “Mozart taught the keyboard to sing”.

The B-flat sonatas stand individually as emblems of Mozart’s inventive brilliance, three distinct universes, albeit all formed from the same raw materials.

Mozart’s artist genius lays in his willingness let the performer capture the mood in the music, and this Orli Shaham does with aplomb. The studio environment of the recording encouraged her to “go all out” with the ornamentation, varying trills, grace notes, and other ornamentation with each successive take.

Recorded in Orli Shaham’s favourite recording venue Mechanics Hall in Worcester Massachusetts, she fully explores the pathos and cultivates the humour in Mozart’s B-flat sonatas. In her own words “Mozart had such insight into what it means to be human and had to get that out in his music. He was superhuman in what he was able to do…but that never comes across in music that is so human.”

MOZART Piano Sonata in B-flat major No. 3, K.281 I. Allegro
MOZART Piano Sonata in B-flat major No. 3, K.281 II. Andante amoroso
MOZART Piano Sonata in B-flat major No. 3, K.281 III. Rondeau: Allegro

MOZART Piano Sonata in B-flat major No.13, K.333 I. Allegro
MOZART Piano Sonata in B-flat major No.13, K.333 II. Andante cantabile
MOZART Piano Sonata in B-flat major No.13, K.333 III. Allegretto grazioso

MOZART Piano Sonata in B-flat major No.17, K.570 I. Allegro
MOZART Piano Sonata in B-flat major No.17, K.570 II. Adagio
MOZART Piano Sonata in B-flat major No.17, K.570 III. Allegretto