Mozart

Sonata for Keyboard and Violin No 5,K10 - Sonata for Keyboard and Violin No 6,K11 - Sonata for Keyboard and Violin No 7,K12 - Sonata for Keyboard and Violin No 8,K13 - Sonata for Keyboard and Violin No 10,K15 -
Marc Grauwels fl Jan Sciffer vc Guy Penson pf Guy Penson hpd

Hyperion CDA66391 (61 minutes : DDD)

Reviewed: Gramophone (5/1990)

During his visit to London in 1764-5 Mozart wrote, with a little paternal assistance, a set of six pieces in the new and popular chamber music form of the time, the accompanied sonata—that is, the sonata for keyboard, with accompaniment for other instruments, a form ideally suited to a society in which there were plenty of quite accomplished young ladies who played the piano or harpsichord and gentlemen willing to accompany them with less demanding music on their violins. Most of this repertory is for keyboard and violin, and that is how the eight-year-old Mozart cast his pieces. But when they were published (with a dedication to the Queen), the title page offered the option of a flute: a sensible commercial decision on the publisher's part when there were almost as many amateur flautists as there were violinists. The music, however, is unmistakably for the violin; it often goes too low for the flute, demands forms of articulation and patterns of passagework that the flute cannot plausibly encompass, and even requires pizzicato and multiple stops at a few points. The works also include an optional part for the cello, almost entirely duplicating the music for the keyboard player's left hand. On this disc, a flute is used, but otherwise all the options are exercised: Nos. 1 and 4 are done with flute and piano, No. 3 with these and cello, No. 5 with flute and harpsichord and the remaining two with these and cello.
I find it a little bizarre that anyone should go to the trouble of resurrecting this slightly trivial music and faithfully observing all the authentic options, if they then go and rewrite the entire set to give the flute something quite different to play from what Mozart intended. The melodic interest in these sonatas belongs largely to the keyboard instrument, of course; the role of the accompanist is to accompany—with held notes, conventional figures, harmonic filling-in and just occasionally fragments of dialogue or counterpoint. Because, presumably, this record is Vol. 1 in a series called ""The Complete Original Music for Flute"", the flute is assigned the keyboard right-hand part virtually whenever it is the more interesting, and the keyboard player has the accompanying part. This doesn't work. The music is changed in character, and the link between style and content is broken. More particularly, there are necessarily many changes in register (as the violin original was too low-lying), and so many switches between the original layout and the altered one—often in the middle of a phrase—that the structure of the music is damaged. And when the keyboard player is asked to represent violin figuration the result is often awkward or absurd (in some places, in fact, the music is rewritten); it would of course be hardly less absurd on the flute.
That said, there are some mildly enjoyable things here, if one is not too insistent on their being things that Mozart intended. The wistful little Andante of the F major Sonata is done with due sensibility, and the imitations between the instruments in the first movement of the one in A still make a good effect. The tempos are well chosen. Some of the quick movements are done in lively, even brilliant, fashion. The strange rhetorical effects in the first movement of No. 6 are well caught. But there are odd flaws too, especially in matters of rhythm—in No. 5, particularly, where there are unrhythmic semiquavers in the first movement, unmusical accelerations in the second and rhythms distorted in the trio of the minuet-finale (this movement has a trio en carillon, with pizzicato multiple stops to represent bells). The freedom with which not only tempo and rhythm but also the notes and textures are treated lead me to feel that the music is perhaps being rather patronizingly presented. It seems to me that if this music is worth presenting at all it is worth doing it properly, and finding out what kinds of effect the child Mozart was looking for, rather than using it as flute fodder—especially as it is, frankly, of interest solely because it is by Mozart.
Marc Grauwels is a capable and euphonious player and I should have preferred to hear his art more faithfully applied. The balance, as I have indicated, favours the flute; the bass is apt to be a shade heavy when the cello is playing.