Alba Ventura - Mozart: Piano Sonatas, Vol. 1 (2020)

Earlier in the year, news broke that prestigious pianist Alba Ventura ventured to record all of Mozart's sonatas in an ambitious production through various albums. The record label Aglae Música is responsible for recording a number of albums with all of these pieces for piano.

The first result comes months after recordings took place at the Petit Palau de la Música in the course of this past July. This is a two-disc album that contains about six first sonatas (three per disc) of the total of 18 that Mozart has in his opus.

Ventura hopes to record the other four CDs in the coming months of a production that will also feature Mozart's Fantasia in do Minor K.475. This time, Aglae music bets on the Barcelona pianist after the success of Rachmaninov's Ventura album and a selection of studios by Czerny, Profókiev and Debussy published in 2016.
Gone are the moments of spontaneity of a young Mozart from sumptuous Enlightenment Europe. If we still remember them, it is probably because the Austrian composer left a part of his versatile personality in each piece he wrote. Each sonata represents a mood and moment of inspiration that often revolves around play and improvisation on melodic themes.

Apart from the difficulty of reproducing this musical transparency, the repetition of some of his works in contemporary life is a challenge for this new production. To avoid making it monotonous and worn out, one needs virtuosity in the grace and freshness of interpretation. Something that Ventura is more than successful. It manages to offer a new look to a proposal with such well-known pieces and, always, without leaving the fidelity to the style of the time.

Within the musical environment of his day, Mozart sought to make simple piano pieces in the performance and with ease of listening to allow the maximum diffusion of his works. The second half of the eighteenth century saw an impasse between the formal balance of the baroque harpsichord and the expressive sound of the forte piano, which became a leading instrument. This freshness and expressive agility that the pianist achieves with excellence, encourages the viewer to buy tickets for a live pianist concert. And in this way, you can enjoy not only the sound, but also the gesture and visual emotionality of the live pianist.

The earliest sonatas we can hear, like most of the ones Mozart composed, contain this complex compendium of stylistic transparency embodied by the influence of figures such as Haydn and Bach, and the sensitivity and expressiveness imported from Mannheim.

The integral begins with one of the movements of Sonata possibly of the most known in the present. The Sonata in C Major K454 with their first Allegro movement convey this vitality transmitted by Haydn. A work that is preceded by the Sonata in Fa Major, K. 280, in which you can see the festivity and the desire to please the well-off classes of much of Mozart's work.

The order of sonatas, despite being neither numerical nor chronological, follows a very special logic. The hues determine the order of appearance of each piece, as they are arranged by the descending fifth wheel, which is essential for understanding classical and romantic harmony. Bach's influence, however, is also palpable in this first volume. The Sonata in G major K283 contains harmonic progressions and thematic repetitions with almost Baroque form and order. On the other hand, the formal order of Mannheim's school appears in the Sonata in Re Major K311.

The second disc closes with another of Mozart's greatest hits, the Sonata in La Major K331. The repetition and ornamental modification of the melodic themes reminds us of a piece of variations while retaining the structure inherent in the classical sonata. The last movement is the famous Turkish round that takes us to Vienna in the early eighties of the eighteenth century. Ornamental variations that are interpreted by the pianist with fidelity to the rythm of the classic style that belongs to Mozart.

Despite being recorded in a space as wide as the Little Palace of Music in Barcelona, ​​the sound retains the sharpness and sound proximity of a studio, with the right reverberation to enjoy clearly each expressive note of Alba Ventura.