Ying Liu wrote:

>I have also heard Mozart piano sonatas played by Horowitz and Lipatti, I
>found Haskil and Perahia are more convincing and touching.  I personally
>think that the tone color/quality of Mozart's piano works should have a
>sense of crystal and transparancy which make them sound elegant, pure and
>natural.  Horowitz and Lipatti's Mozart sound more energetic, exciting,
>vivid but lacks the feeling of angle purity which I think the most
>important part of Mozart's music.

This is certainly a valid view of Mozart's piano music, and I have had
similar feelings about what WAM's music "should" sound like.  For this
reason, I have most of the Perahia recordings of the piano concertos.  The
praise that has been given about them in this thread still seems quite
accurate.

That said, I'm not so sure that I want "my" Mozart to sound that way right
now, and so Perahia's recordings just don't spend much time on my CD player
anymore.

Lately, I feel more inclined to the view (perhaps a revisionist one),
that Mozart's music can take, perhaps even demands, a more dramatic and
"energetic" treatment.  Maybe the term might be "operatic".  If it is true
that Mozart saw his operas as his most important body of work, I can see
how many of his masterpiece concerti (written at about the same time as
many of his important operas) reflect the notion of drama that marked his
compositional style.  In one of the lesser known concerti, K.  503 (also
known as #25), the marchlike tune in the first movement really does have
the echo of both Figaro and the Don to my ears.  For that reason, I wish
that Stephen Bishop (Kovacevich) had recorded more of the concerti, I still
enjoy very much his performances of Nos.  21 and 25.  And perhaps I should,
in a contrarian way, look more closely at Horowitz and Lipatti!

And perhaps oddly enough to some List readers, I do find that many of the
Bilson/Gardiner renditions (with fortepiano and period instruments) still
give me the right amount of spice and drama, contrast and contention that
I've been looking for of late in my Mozart piano concerti.

Bill H.