What a gem! Mozart's sonatas are not his best-known works (except for those who play piano) because of their lack of outward virtuosity and the need to find their depth. Ms Landowska has found it. So very beautifully, utterly sensitively played, with a daring touch of rubato which might make conservative Mozartists swoon. I have favourited this and will listen to it again and again.
The Rondo is sheer HEAVEN! No one else ever has -- or ever will -- do it precisely this way again. She makes of it a veritable CONCERTO for solo piano. Absolute genius! No question about it. But please don't let any of US mere mortals try to do the same thing. Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but it always winds up producing a COUNTERFEIT version of the real thing. This is some of Landowska's very best work. BRAVO!
Landowska prepared this and several other Mozart piano sonatas for LPs to be issued in 1956, 200 years after Mozart's birth. Recording was done at her home and was not ready for issue until 1957. - John Austin, Australia
I remember these recordings as a teenager when I found my grandfather's old recording stored away in a box. This particular recording of this sonata has haunted me my entire adult life as it is the way I have always thought Mozart should be played. There is something magical in her phrasing and legato without pedal... I challenge anyone to find another modern artist that can do this at this level....thank you so much for sharing....
Interesting. Landowska "sings" Mozart, recalling Bach's concept of playing in a "cantabile" style. She had faultless rhythm and yet she was able to know where to "bend" the rhythm for expressivity. Also, she ornaments Mozart and adds expressive devices such as rolled chords. Taking such freedoms with Mozart is very rare nowadays, IMO.
Landowska was one of the first famous instrumentalists after Heifetz ,Horowitz and Arrau that I was exposed to as a child .I bouht her Hadyn and Mozart coroation concerti .I was so young at all the music I bought with my pennies and dimes was new to me ! Many will say this is "great .Truly great Mozart playing . she was a formidable woman and I have great respect for one of the few woman who made an international career in the time of Adele aus der Ohe ,Teresa Carreno and some of the other firebreathing women virtuosi at the end of 19th and beginning of 20th century.The fact hat she could interest coming generations in this quiet music in the age of the airplane and automobile means more than we can easily ever imagine . I will ony say we have much finer Mozart today and even Perahi's mentor back in the 30's seemsto have bee the only tasteful Mozart player .Geiseking is as wrongheaded as most.But really who can say that Uchida .Habler,DeLarroca ,Pires are not just fulfiing the dictates of our era .But the piano playing here itself is not subtle . All those peple who love to say the virtuosi of he 20's and 30's are unsurpassed speak a myth . Sit down with any truly well trained pianist and put a Godowsky or Hofmann who with all his stylistic deformities is as exciting as Horowitz and that can't be humanly surpassed .whenI hear LangLang andthe imagination he has I think we have an eve finer player technically and certainly he has great respect for each composer's individual style.How is it that Rachmaninoff never thought of this . Just listen to their recordings and if you know anything the truth presents itsle f! Perfect tempo in her slow movement but it is as as romanticas a Chopin ncturne - therefore Ashkenazy and almost everyone studying today except me (I am no pianist surely) plays a more distinctive and i would say a finer Mozart (that heavy harpsichord she used in her Goldberg Variations has been commented on negatively enough that there is no need for me to throw stones and just listen to what she gave us - which is memorable she had a big musical personality ;entranced !One can't stop listening to her slow movements unlike Backhaus her Catholicity was of a much different stripe and completely bewitches me !
You can take all your piano competitions champions home but give me Wanda Landowska and I'll be sure content and satisfied that my ears have been blessed by a tone such as hers and a playing that even Shakespeare will write a sonnet and an ode for. I am extremely grateful that these recordings remain extant and the best part is that they are noise and clutter free. Wonderful and splendid. Now I think I'll set aside Haebler, Larrocha and Andras Schiff, if you don't mind.
I adore her piano playing! I wish she had done more! Her Mozart Piano Concerto No.22 E-flat interpretation (live) is one the most beautiful, deep and inventive ever!
what a wonderful sound and what intelligence of interpretation. this espressivo is similar to horowitz conception but very different in charactere.... the generous phrasing is absolutely wonderful. she points out what is important. very sensible in each detail.
Very imaginative performance, especially of the final rondo. Landowska really takes to heart the fact that Mozart essentially placed a cadenza near the end, as if it were a piano concerto, and then she goes even further. You have the two timings reversed, by the way.
Wonderful to fnnd these old RCA recordings of Landowska in Mozart. I lost my set in a move, only to find out that not only were they permanently out of print, but due to legal and copyright entanglements were unlikely to ever be release again. Such sublime, authoritative and abundantly informed playing. And to think that one German pianist, Rolf Natkemper. with whom I served on the jury of the famous piano competition in Jaen (Rosalyn Tureck was on the jury, too) refused to believe that Landowska ever recorded anything on the piano!
pianopera Yes, Ralf Narttkemper! He refused to believe that Landowska recorded anything at the piano.Of course he took a dim view of recording itself, too. He was terribly disrespectful of the competitors, laughing loudly from the juror's balcony at several whose playing displeased him. Finally, he wanted to withold the first prize, for no other reason than mean-spiritedness. The rest of us, including Rosalyn Tureck and Dag Achatz vetoed him on that silly idea. At the party that followed the final round, he congratulated the winners, insisting that if they wanted to really become great artists that they would be well advised to go to Germany to study with him! He played a recital to open the competition, scowling at the audience en route to the piano. To this day, I have never heard a more heavy handed, leaden and sleep inducing piano recital by anyone!
>> The intent [in taking notably flexible variations in tempo, and much added melodic variation unauthorized by the score] is 'not to make Mozart's music sound 'better' but to get away from the yoke of dogmatism which only encourages the proliferation of 'cloned type performance' and chokes the veins of artistry and creativity.
Remember her recording of concert 26 with Calle Orchestra before war.78 rpm remastered 33 rpm.Angel Celebrities (face 1) with Haydn `turquish`Concert on clavecin.Same orchestra (face 2).I started listening her at 13 years old on clavecin and sometines on piano.I agree with variations.It shows you are not pupil of a conservatory to get good marks but a free musician.
The times are excellent. The sound is clear and crystal clear. Excellent interpretation. Too bad only for the extra notes which are not justifiable in any way.
A n instrumentalist I adored as a child because I didn't know any better ! This is one of her better Mozart recordings - personal without being overbearing - there is something really big that pushes itself on one immediately .A Uchida , Haskil , Lily or Haebler or Scott Ross she was not supposed never be . I've never heard such intimate playing from her . As an adult I find her fascinating like Toscanini but stay far away from the both of them ! I can't believe this is her in the slow movement . Her Fmajor sonata was so rough mannered and almost bossy or vociferous like her concerto no.26 which I grew up . Maybe something in me doesn't allow me to really hear her sometimes .
No one know exactly how old she was - but this is from at least her late seventies. One of her teachers, Michalowski, had studied with the LIszt disciple Carl Tausig and had impressed Liszt himself. He is known to have had a free approach to text. This Mozart playing has a good deal of the virtuoso practice of the mid and early nineteenth century at the back of its mind, and a good deal of Chopin, too.
You may be on target with your observation but I do have a bit of disagreement as to the why. I say "why not"? The intent is 'not to make Mozart's music sound better' but to get away from the yoke of dogmatism which only encourages the proliferation of 'cloned type performance' and chokes the veins of artistry and creativity. With due respects to Wanda, Pedagogues once warred over use of the right pedal but now many effectively use it and the soft pedal as well. You ask why? I say why not?
Full of grace and fancy...and historically it may be correct to play stylish embellishments and (in the last movement) cadenza's that are not in the score... delightful!
Using pedal isn't artistic or creative license. It's laziness, because pianists don't have the ability to execute the old style fingerwork, which Bach, Mozart, and Chopin championed or relied on to express. Landowska, being a harpsichordist, this ability comes naturally to her. Most pianists who can't do this use pedal to cover up the fact that they are cloddish without it. It makes Bach or Mozart sound boring, not 'artistic,' they lose what it is that makes them excellent.
I agree with you, but some works of the XIXᵉ siècle require sparing amounts of pedal. Notice SPARING, not lots. Pianists nowadays often use TOO MICH PEDAL which shrouds the pièce in muddy confusion of clashing harmonies.And by the way, l think Couperin championed old fingerwork. He wrote examples in his treatise.
concerning the little variations to the original text I think it would be better not to do them. they are not necessary and don t make the composition better. its possible to do that as its well done but why should we think we can make the music of mozart better with doing this...
