Robert Levin - Lecture on Mozart's incomplete sonatas | ECM Records

Mozart expert and musicology scholar Robert Levin offers completions of sonata movements which Mozart never finished. Levin’s compositional vision for the fragments reveal the pianist’s profound knowledge and understanding of Mozart’s diction and the musical language of the composer’s time. On the Sonata movement in C major, K 42 (35a) Levin observes: “this cheerful triple-meter fragment breaks off after 25 bars, leaving us with the main and secondary themes. It should be obvious that the piece breaks off precisely at the beginning of a sequence intended to lead to the coda. My completion attempts to maintain the movement’s high spirits and outspoken character.”

ECM New Series releases the first complete recording of W.A. Mozart’s piano sonatas on the composer’s own fortepiano (Anton Walter, 1782). This comprehensive, 7-CD boxed set also comprises unfinished fragments by the Austrian composer, here completed by American pianist and Mozart-scholar Robert Levin in consideration of Mozart’s idioms and the compositional mannerisms of his era. Robert Levin’s interpretations of the piano sonatas, too, are informed by the performance practice customs of the First Viennese School, including improvised elements and decorations in the repeats. The recordings are accompanied by a 100-page booklet featuring an extensive essay on the sonatas by Mozarteum-director and Mozart-expert Ulrich Leisinger as well as a performer’s note by Levin, manuscript-scores and more.

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