On Mon, 10 May 1999 08:34:35 PDT, Donald Satz <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>On a different message board, one I read but never post on, there's been
>some discussion of the relative merits of Mozart's piano sonatas.  Many
>posters on that board felt that the piano sonatas were not at Mozart's
>highest level; a few even indicated that Mozart's early sonatas were of
>no merit at all.
>
>I'm curious as to how list members view these sonatas, and whether a large
>difference in quality is noted between the early and the more mature
>sonatas.

I don't hear a substantial quality difference between Mozart's piano
sonatas and the other genres in which he had a lifelong interest.
Having said that, I would mostly agree with what the list is saying.
My view is that Mozart was a wildly uneven composer, and this remains
true in late Mozart (even though there is a somewhat larger proportion
of great music amongst the later works than in the earlier ones).

Perhaps the piano sonatas don't have the willful concentration of mastery
which you'll find in, say, the string quartets. But this is a sign of
the times, I think, in that piano sonata in the period was more a vehichle
of entertainment and instruction for the amateur than a vehicle of artistic
display for the professional interpreter (as it was to become
in Beethoven's hands). You can sense this aspect even in Haydn's
sonatas, which have generally higher quality than Mozart's.

Ulvi
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