Mozart sounds. We smile.
No other music has so much power. Yes, Papa Bach, but Mozart never loses his smile. Wow, in the most terrible moments, smile.
Gather all, but all emotions, without fuss. He is not self-pitying, he does not brag about anything, he does not tell us how to get, if sad or happy or angry, he just smiles.
And he laughs out loud, as in the third movement of Concerto 25 for piano (especially the laugh in Daniel Barenboim’s recording), from which we could assure that Milos Forman took the model to give the actor Tom Hulce an indication of how to laugh out loud , practically with the metronome in hand, in the beautiful movie Amadeus.
In addition to laughter, smiles, laughter, in Mozart’s music there are sighs, singing, dancing, joyous faintness. That is why he is THE composer. Volfi raffle.
The new album by Icelandic pianist Víkingur Ólaffson is a beautiful tribute to Volfi Mozart, it is titled Mozart & Contemporaries and brings our favorite composer side by side, hand in hand, with some of his contemporaries: Baldassare Galuppi, Carl Philip Emanuel Bach, Domenico Cimarosa and Joseph Haydn.
It begins with the galloping of Galuppi: andante humorous, a walk of graceful clouds, amid smiles. Baldassare Galuppi also knew how to smile regardless of the moment, intricacies or circumstance. It is friendly music to the fullest.
Venetian, a native of Burano and therefore known as The Buranello, music director of the Ospedale dei Mendicanti (Vivaldi was the music director of the Ospedale dela Pietá, also in Venice), master of the chapel of St. beauty in a series of arpeggiated choruses, has a timeless spirit, announces Schubert. He has, according to Víkingur Ólaffson’s judgment, “an altered state of consciousness between being awake and at the same time immersed in a dream”. So prodigious.
In the notes to the program, Víkingur practically elaborated a guided listening (that is the spirit of the Disquero: listen to conversations with the readers) and explains one by one the tracks what he did, how and why. The second piece of this recital is the Rondó K. 494, “The essence of Mozart: every time we listen to the central theme, so simple, so simple, so angelic, it brings us something different, always”. The essence of Mozart: every time we listen to it, it sounds better; it is a music that grows with us, in the course of time.
By making this album with music by Mozart, Víkingur tried to put aside every preconceived idea, every commonplace, every legend, fable, and every pretense. Instead, he wanted to “delve into Mozart’s musical ecosystem”.
Mozart met other composers, not all those Víkingur included on this album, but he worshiped them from a distance.
That is why the third track It is dedicated to one of the demigods whom Mozart admired and from whom Mozart learned a lot: Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, second of the sons of Johann Sebastian Bach and main representative of the Sensitive style, musical movement similar to Storm and stress, which offers the first components of romanticism, and in turn advanced elements of the classical style; He also starred, in a very elegant way (to rhyme), the main episodes of the gallant period.
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach contributed to the development of the sonata form, and was thus a forerunner of the work of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. That is why Mozart said: “He is the father; we are the children ”.
The Rondó II In D minor by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, who defines and plays Víkingur Ólafsson on the piano, “it is a very free piece with very daring harmonies. It has a very wild point; it is like a wild cat. It is like a misbehaved child. This work could well have been written by Stravinsky ”.
The next work, Cimarosa’s Sonata 42, is of monumental beauty. His melody belongs to bel canto but he literally modified it at will, Víkingur, and that is why he wrote the word “arrangement” next to the title in a gesture of humility, because he actually recomposed it.
Then the Fantasy in D minor, K. 485 it sounds in its true nature: extremely virtuosic. It is the work of a great pianist, Mozart, and it is written “to bring pleasure and amazement” and that is why Víkingur interprets it faster than all existing recordings.
Bringing pleasure and wonder, what a precise definition of the art of music.
The next piece is also by Cimarosa, but it was also rewritten by Víkingur. “This piece was not originally on the album, but in the recording studio, during one of the breaks, its melody began to play in my head. So I sat down and transcribed it here and there, with the microphone on. I arranged it in real time and recorded it in real time. It’s a bit like a Vivaldi Sicilian. It has a beautiful golden melody ”.
Golden melody. Provide pleasure and wonder. Music of angels. Smiles What a component of Mozart’s music.
Next, another prodigy: the Sonata in B minor Hob. XVI: 32 by Joseph Haydn advances backwards as well as forwards. Look to the baroque in the minuet and foreshadow Beethoven in the final “Presto”.
Then the Small jig, “Another of Mozart’s completely timeless and ageless pieces, written on a pilgrimage he made to Leipzig to visit the grave of Johann Sebastian Bach. It was one of the most difficult stages in Mozart’s life, when everyone seemed to be against him. I think he was looking for a refuge and wrote this Little Giga in just one day in Leipzig. It seems, again, like Stravinsky, or like Bach. It is so chromatic, so incredible ”.
The works that Víkingur chose for this album belong to the production of the last 10 years of Mozart’s life, when he was in full swing. The knowledge that the Icelandic pianist, Ólaffson, possesses of the life and musical context of Mozart, allows him to ironize: the Easy Sonata, O Simple Sonata, it is the work of an author in full control of his powers, it is perfect and it is also “the music of a painful search”.
The Adagio in E-flat major, an arrangement by Ólaffson from String Quintet Number 4, follows on the album: “It can be my favorite chamber piece of any era and for any instrument, including the entire repertoire for piano. It’s amazing from start to finish. It looks a bit like Symphony Number 40. The melodies just stop and we don’t know where they are. “
What sounds after, the Larghetto of Piano Sonata number 34 “it’s usually played in a very different way than I recorded it, and the notation is also a bit different and that’s how I found this kind of icy tranquility. It is winter music, almost like a meditation ”.
Volfi’s Sonata 14 immediately plays: “It is Mozart’s greatest piano work, the seed of the 19th century. It is unthinkable, for example, that Beethoven would have composed his Sonata Patética without hearing the first movement, where Mozart pushes the instrument to its limits, which is a constant in the works of his last days ”.
After another piece of “icy tranquility”, the Adagio in B minor K. 540, comes the culmination of the album, the most moving episode: the Ave verum Corpus, K.618; in Franz Liszt’s transcription for solo piano.
Let’s leave the word to Víkingur Ólaffson: “in his transcription, Mozart lowers the tonality by a third, even if higher, and changes the essence of the music, making it darker and brighter at the same time.
“It is one of the best transcripts, because it doesn’t try to add too much. It is limited to presenting it in a new medium, without superficial arpeggios and other effects. Let music be exactly what it is. I wanted to finish this album by presenting Mozart as the greatest of geniuses, which is how Franz Liszt also saw him ”.
Volfi Mozart, the greatest of geniuses, author of golden melodies. Music to bring pleasure and amazement. Music of angels. Music that translates into smiles in all languages.
The greatest of geniuses.
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