Sigiswald Kuijken, Luc Devos – Mozart: Sonatas for Fortepiano and Violin (5CD) (2006)

Historical-instrument-specialist violinist Sigiswald Kuijken and fortepianist Luc Devos have issued several discs of Mozart "Sonatas for Fortepiano and Violin," otherwise known as Sonatas for violin and piano. Here they collect those discs and round them out with two more to make a complete set of Mozart's sonatas for this combination. The wording on the cover here is the accurate one, used by Mozart himself, but the composer correctly intuited that the way to the future lay in a more equal balance between violin and keyboard. These works range in origin from the 1770s to the last years of Mozart's life, and they show considerable development in the handling of the violin.
This set is priced right, and the players are quite sensitive to the shifting balance between the two instruments. Devos plays an instrument modeled on a fortepiano built in Augsburg in 1788, and it's just right for the sound world of these pieces. One almost has a feeling of being able to trace Mozart's imagination as he remade the violin sonata into something approaching its modern form. The downside of these performances is that they seem to treat sweetness as a dirty word. Kuijken and Devos are cool, witty in a clipped way, rather metronomic in some of the slow movements. They seem to be trying to strip away layers of Romantic sentiment and use hyper-clear textures to get back to a "real" Mozart. In the economical late language of the Sonata in A major, K. 526, on disc 1, they approach works well, but in the earlier pieces, written under the influence of Mozart's Paris visit, Kuijken and Devos come off as though they'd really rather be playing Baroque music. The sweetness in Mozart's music of this period crossed genres and was present in those where the use of historically appropriate instruments is not so much of an issue. The sound and approach of these discs holds together well, considering that they were recorded over a 14-year period, and anyone wanting to hear Mozart on the instruments he wrote his music for should check it out. There are, however, less severe Mozart recordings of this type; sample those of Rachel Podger and Gary Cooper, or Fabrizio Cipriani and Sergio Ciomei, as well.