Mozart Piano Sonatas
(Deutsche Grammophon)
Pletnev’s account of sonatas K330-332 and K457, composed during Mozart’s freelance Vienna years when he rushed between jobs with his piano in a wheelbarrow, brings out, with the lightest, most expressive touch, both the excitement of independence and the melancholy of the loner.
Pletnev’s allegros sprint across the page, firing on an exhilarating wit, while his glowing slow movements ruminate philosophically. His phrasing is poetry, his rubato rhetoric, his dynamic never static, his ornamentation crisp, precise and always exquisitely tasteful. Mostly, however, it is the sheer beauty of his liquid tone on his chosen Bluthner grand instrument that completes the seduction.
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RICK JONES