Mozart: Sonata for Piano duet in C major, K521

Mozart wrote five duet piano sonatas and several separate works for fourhands.

Of the latter, two of his sonatas - the one in F, KV 497 and the one in C, KV521 - are included on this disc. The other work is the great D Major Sonata for Two Pianos, KV448. The performers are the Kuijken sisters, Marie and Veronica.

Sisters Marie and Veronica belong to the highly talented Kuijken family from Belgium, the daughters of the renowned early music director and baroque violinist Sigiswald Kuijken. Marie is known primarily as a soprano, and often works together with her father as a soloist in his legendary ensemble La Petite Bande. She has been a soloist in the group’s critically acclaimed recordings of the Passions of J. S. Bach, and Monteverdi’s Vespers. She is also however an accomplished violinist and pianist and performs on the violin with La Petite Bande and the Ensemble Baroque du Léman. As a pianist she specialises in the Mozart repertoire, and has for some years performed his pieces for two pianos alongside her sister Veronica. Since 2003 Veronica Kuijken has been a teacher of baroque chant at the Centre de Musique Ancienne in Geneva. She also accompanies flute and chant on the piano at the Conservatory of Lausanne.

The Sonata for Two Pianos in D major, K. 448 was composed in 1781 when Mozart was 25 years old, and is one of his only formal works of this kind. It is a three-movement work written in strict sonata form. The two Sonatas for Four Hands, KV 497 in F and KV 521, were written later and are two of his last major pieces for piano.

Waltraud Wulz and Antoinette Van Zabner perform piano duets by Mozart, Schubert, Eröd, Ravel and Johann Strauss II. 'Both pianists combine a beautiful sound, splendid technique and sure-handed perception with a distinct stylistic understanding as well as the ability to work and to hear their way into complicated structures' (Krzystof Meyer, composer and writer).