Gottlieb Wallisch - Mozart in Vienna (2010) Hi-Res

Young Austrian pianist Gottlieb Wallisch, whose assorted Schubert recordings for the Naxos label have been highly regarded, here offers a program entitled Mozart in Vienna, which means what, exactly? Mozart resided in Vienna during the composition of a great many of his piano works, and the album doesn't, in either the music-making or in Wallisch's own notes, suggest aspects of style distinct to the Vienna period. It's true that three of the five works here date from the last years of Mozart's life, and Wallisch finds a sparse "late style" in these. But he doesn't use his modern grand piano to distinguish these from the others. He's plainly a technically well-equipped player, and the audiophile sound from the Linn label captures all the details of his use of the pedals, which is anything but sparse. The crisp counterpoint of the opening movement of the Piano Sonata in D major, K. 576, and the oddly unsettling unisons of the Piano Sonata in B flat major, K. 570, have to compete with sustained notes, and the slow movements, along with the dramatic Fantasy in D minor, K. 397, are oddly mechanical. Most overwhelmed of all are the Ten Variations in G major on "Unser dummer Pöbel meint," K. 455, whose madcap quality disappears into a haze of pedal and precise technique. A sonically superior and undoubtedly technically accomplished recording, but a strangely uninvolving one.