Heaven in her pocket
How is it possible to say that any music by Mozart is ‘neglected’? And yet the piano sonatas do not bask in the radiance of adoration enjoyed by the mature concertos or the standalone solo pieces such as the fantasias, the B minor Adagio or the A minor Rondo. Almost every piano pupil picks up the so-called ‘Sonata facile’ K545 at some point, probably followed by the ‘alla Turca’ final rondo of K331 – though very few of them will make their way through the same sonata’s opening variation movement, past the perfect simplicity of its theme. More advanced students graduate to one of the mid-period Viennese sonatas, the B flat K333 or the higher drama of the A minor K310.
These pieces account for the well-thumbed pages of most Mozart sonata editions. Wondering why many of the others lie unread, I ask Elisabeth Leonskaja, who has set down a muchanticipated complete cycle for Warner Classics. She compares Mozart to Haydn in this regard: ‘How many of Haydn’s sonatas are regularly performed – 10 out of 52? Not more, I think. And why is that so? Probably because several sonatas by both composers were already famous and were then also recorded more
