Rachel Podger & Gary Cooper - Mozart: Complete Sonatas for keyboard & violin, Vol. 3 (2006) [SACD]

Anyone thinking of Mozart as a performer probably imagines him at a harpsichord or fortepiano. And that is an accurate picture. Mozart was a gifted keyboard player, but not a showman of the keyboard. He detested empty virtuosity. Wolfgang, however, had been trained from his earliest years by his father Leopold as a double talent. He played both harpsichord and violin. The popularity of his sonatas, variation sets, and concerti for the piano has tended to overshadow his violin compositions, but the first sounds that his baby ears received probably came from his father’s violin. Wolfgang heard him tuning the instrument, saw him putting on new strings now and then, playing, rehearsing. And of course he heard Leopold praising his violin and commenting on the music. Until Wolfgang moved to Vienna in 1781, the sound of the violin had accompanied him virtually every day of his life, for Leopold had been with him almost constantly……