Piano Sonatas Nos. 1-6 Roberto Prosseda

• 1 1. Allegro 06:54
• 2 2. Andante 07:27
• 3 3. Allegro 04:41
• 4 1. Allegro assai 06:16
• 5 2. Adagio 08:14
• 6 3. Presto 04:17
• 7 1. Allegro 06:25
• 8 2. Andante amoroso 06:56
• 9 3. Rondeau (Allegro) 04:43
• 10 1. Adagio 06:48
• 11 2. Menuetto I-II 03:54
• 12 3. Allegro 03:05
• 13 1. Allegro 05:37
• 14 2. Andante 06:48
• 15 3. Presto 06:03
• 16 1. Allegro 06:55
• 17 2. Rondeau en Polonaise (Andante) 04:12
• 18 3. Tema con variazione 15:07
• 19 First draft (fragment) of the first movement of the Sonata KV 284 (205b) 02:10
• Total Runtime 01:56:32

Info for Piano Sonatas Nos. 1-6

In 2016, Decca releases the first album of Prosseda's complete recording of Mozart's Piano Sonatas. The first release (April 2016) includes the first 6 Sonatas, from K 279 to K 284. Prosseda chose to play Mozart on a Fazioli F 278 piano, tuned with the Vallotti unequal temperament. This particular tuning was quite common in Moazrt's time, but is today very rarely used on modern pianos. It gives each key a unique colour and makes the performance particularly sensitive to the harmonic changes.

Is there really any need for yet another recording of Mozart’s sonatas? Is it still possible to say something new when playing these compositions while maintaining respect for the score and for the composer’s indications? If Mozart were alive today, would he prefer to perform his sonatas on a fortepiano of the time or on a modern piano?

These are questions to which it is not possible to give an unequivocal answer, but on which I have reflected a great deal, also profiting from the availability of the sources and of many recent philological studies. In the letter to his father cited earlier, written on 17 October 1777, Mozart declared his enthusiasm for a new Stein piano that he had tried out, which was provided with a rudimentary system for working the dampers (corresponding to the right pedal on modern instruments). Referring to the sonata in D he said that it “has an incomparable effect on Stein's pianos. The pedals, pressed by the knees, are also better made by him than by any one else; you scarcely require to touch them to make them act, and as soon as the pressure is removed not the slightest vibration is perceptible.” This shows Mozart’s curiosity about innovations and his readiness to experiment with instruments that provided greater expressive variety.

Nowadays it is possible to consult the manuscripts of the first six sonatas, currently held at the Biblioteka Jagiellońska in Kraków, and there are various critical editions that compare the manuscript version with the first published editions. On looking at the scores one is struck by the large number of original articulation marks, which we do not find so abundantly in the subsequent sonatas. I have tried, therefore, to observe the original phrase marks and dynamics attentively, even in cases in which tradition has accustomed us to softer sounds and smoother contours. It is from those phrase marks and the different kinds of staccato (dots or wedges) that one can deduce how Mozart imagined that a musical phrase should be “pronounced”. The dynamic signs, here apparently limited to forte and piano (occasionally crescendo or decrescendo, and very occasionally pianissimo), also reveal a poetic world in which contrasts are fundamental for the definition of suitable expressive variety.

In order to render those intentions as well as possible I needed a particularly sensitive instrument with a different sonority from the usual “artificial” sound of the modern piano. Therefore I considered recording the sonatas on fortepianos of Mozart’s time and I tried out several historical instruments and some recent copies. Practising with the fortepiano has been of great importance for me. It has enabled me to discover sounds and manners of expression that have allowed me to enter more deeply into Mozart’s world and to enrich my imagination in terms of timbre. However, I have had to recognise that my “mother tongue” is still the modern piano, an instrument that I have been playing for nearly 40 years and one with which I am able to give immediate expression to a greater variety of musical intentions.

So I decided to use a Fazioli concert grand built in 2015, generously made available by Paolo Fazioli at the Fazioli Concert Hall in Sacile. The very refined mechanism of this instrument and the sensitivity of the soundboard, particularly responsive to differences of touch, make it possible to obtain many nuances of colour, clearly rendering differences in articulation. It is also possible to play with microdynamics even in contexts of extreme rapidity, such as in trills or short phrases, and to perform the original forte-piano indications, i.e., a sudden dynamic shift in a held note. The idea of recreating the transparency of the fortepiano sound led me to reduce the use of the sustaining pedal to the minimum and to seek sounds verging on silence in the rare cases in which Mozart indicates pianissimo.

The particular colour of recordings on a fortepiano is also determined by the historical tuning, which does not use equal temperament. Prompted by a suggestion given by my friends Jan Willem de Vriend and Stuart Isacoff, to whom I am most grateful for their valuable advice, I asked Fazioli to tune the piano in accordance with the “Vallotti” unequal temperament, quite unusual nowadays on the modern piano but very widespread in the years when Mozart composed these sonatas. The difference from the normal modern tuning lies in the different colour that each key acquires as a result of dividing the octave into twelve unequal semitones. Thus each sonata has a quite particular character, and it is understandable why Mozart set certain movements in a particular key. For example, the F minor of the Adagio in Sonata K 280 here takes on a decidedly grief-stricken tone, not just one of melancholy. And when, after the opening passage, we come to the section in A flat major, it sounds more precarious and illusory, suggesting the idea of a happiness only imagined, very far from reality.

In the transitions from one key to another, regardless of whether they occur abruptly or gradually, this makes it much easier to capture the shift from one harmonic (and emotional) setting to another much more convincingly. The dissonant harmonies sound much more jarring and “distressing”, emphasising the dramatic and visionary capability that is already present in these early sonatas and that makes them, nearly 250 years later, music of great power and modernity. (Roberto Prosseda)

Roberto Prosseda, piano

Roberto Prosseda
born in Latina, Italy, in 1975 is a leader DECCA artist.

His Decca albums dedicated to Felix Mendelssohn, including the Piano Concerto No. 3 with the Gewandhaus Orchestra and Riccardo Chailly, have won much acclaim in the press, including the CHOC from Le Monde de la Musique Classique, the Diapason d'Or and Chamber Music CD of the Month in the UK's Classic FM magazine. In 2010, Deutsche Grammophon selected twelve recordings by Prosseda to add to the box set, "Classic Gold". In 2014 Prosseda completed his 10-year project of recording all of Mendelssohn's piano works for Decca in 9 CDs.

Roberto Prosseda has performed regularly with some of the world's most important orchestras, such as the London Philharmonic Orchestra, New Japan Philharmonic, Moscow State Philharmonic, Accademia Santa Cecilia, Filarmonica della Scala, Bruxelles Philharmonic, Residentie Orkest, Netherlands Symphony, Berliner Symphoniker, Staatskapelle Weimar, Calgary Philharmonic, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Leipzig Gewandhaus. He performed under the baton of David Afkham, Marc Albrecht, Christian Arming, Harry Bickett, Oleg Caetani, Riccardo Chailly, Pietari Inkinen, Yannik Nezeit-Seguin, George Pehlivanian, Dennis Russel-Davies, Tugan Sokhiev, Jan Willem de Vriend, Jurai Valcuha.

Other than Mendelssohn, whose piano music he is considered to be a leading interpreter of today, Prosseda's interpretations of Mozart, Schubert, Schumann and Chopin have been particularly praised, and these composers have in fact featured in Prosseda's recent Decca recordings. In 2015, Prosseda started the complete recording of Mozart's Piano Sonatas with a modern piano tuned with unequal temperament. An active proponent of Italian music, Prosseda also recorded the complete piano works of Petrassi and Dallapiccola.

In September 2011 Prosseda gave his debut on the pedal piano, performing the Concerto for Pedal Piano by Gounod in the world premiere version for modern instrument. Concerts are planned in the coming seasons on this instrument, rediscovering the original compositions by Robert Schumann, Franz Liszt and Charles Valentin Alkan.

Several composers, including Ennio Morricone, have already written new pieces for pedal piano for Roberto Prosseda, and a recording of Gounod's four pieces for pedal piano and orchestra with the Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana conducted by Howard Shelley, was released on the Hyperion label in fall 2013. Roberto Prosseda is also very active in musical divulgation. He wrote the book "Il Pianoforte" for Curci Editori (2013) and made three documentaries dedicated to Mendelssohn, Chopin and Liszt (Euroarts).

He is currently artistic advisor at Cremona Musica International Exhibitions and president of the Associazione Mendelssohn.

This album contains no booklet.