An important part of Anne-Sophie Mutter's "Mozart Project" is to present
the composer's mature violin sonatas. Between 2005 and 2007, Ms. Mutter
and pianist Lambert Orkis toured throughout Europe, North America and Asia
with the Mozart sonatas. In major musical centers such as Paris, London,
Vienna and New York, they offered the entire cycle over three consecutive
evenings. This three-evening survey was recorded in Munich in February
2006.
Mozart composed sonatas for violin and piano from his earliest youth until
his final years. But while the early pieces are little more than piano
sonatas with violin accompaniments, the more mature works of 1778 begin
to integrate the violin and piano parts more closely, and to highlight the
growing independence and virtuosity of the violin. Mozart composed several
violin sonatas during his stay in Mannheim and on his voyage to Paris in
1778.
These first mature sonatas reflect some of the "Sturm und Drang" atmosphere
of the music at the court of Mannheim, which emboldened Mozart to write in
a freer and more dramatic mode. The E minor Sonata K. 304, for instance,
prefigures Romanticism, and K. 306 incorporates a written-out cadenza for
both instruments, similarly to an operatic "scena". Indeed, the sonatas'
closeness to the opera is an element that Anne-Sophie Mutter herself has
often pointed out: "For me, these sonatas are like narratives. Mozart never
left the operatic stage, not even in his chamber music."
Mozart published his second set of mature sonatas shortly after he moved to
Vienna in 1781. Among the most outstanding works of this cycle is the F
major Sonata K. 377, a restrained piece of brooding intensity and
introspection. The last sonatas were written between 1784 and 1788 and
include Ms. Mutter's favorite, the B flat major Sonata K. 454, "a
monumental achievement," as she puts it. "In the famous Andante, the violin
and piano are so elaborately intertwined that you simply don't notice when
the words are taken out of your mouth and put back again. ... This work has
a depth that's unequalled." (Anne-Sophie Mutter)
Also available is a "making-of" documentary on "The Mozart Project" (45'),
in which Anne-Sophie Mutter talks about her relationship to Mozart's music
and is joined by her colleagues André Previn, Lambert Orkis and Daniel
Müller-Schott.
