Mozart: Piano Sonata No. 18 in D major, K576 'Hunt'

Beautiful performances of Mozart’s late piano sonatas by the world renowned Portuguese pianist Maria João Pires. The recordings originally appeared on the Denon label in the 1970s and are now available from Regis at super-budget price.

'Pires has always been something of a Mozart specialist, and her playing is tasteful and cleanly articulated, the lyrical melodies sensitively shaped, the passage work fluent and even. Nothing she does is ever harsh or graceless.' Gramophone

Friedrich Gulda has become something of a cult figure in the music world. This 2CD set presents him in Mozart recordings – both concertos and solo works – largely for Decca, with one item, the Piano Concerto No. 17, recorded for Amadeo.

Born in Vienna in 1930, Gulda began formal lessons aged seven with Felix Pazofsky, and within five years had graduated to the Vienna Music Academy. The Viennese classics – especially Mozart and Beethoven – quickly established themselves at the heart of Gulda’s performing repertoire but he was also a remarkable jazz performer. It was while he was rapidly absorbing jazz into his musical bloodstream that Gulda cut his first Mozart concerto recordings for Decca, starting in 1954 with KV 449. His accompanists, as on the coupling of KV 505 and 537 recorded almost exactly a year later, were the New Symphony Orchestra of London, a studio ensemble of hand-picked players, and conductor-composer Anthony Collins, who during the same period recorded the first complete cycle of Sibelius’s symphonies with the London Symphony Orchestra. What strikes one in particular about these recordings is their surprisingly ‘modern’ approach, free of Romantic rhetoric, with speeds effortlessly maintained and rhythms kept buoyant and sparkling, matched by a beguiling textural clarity and staccato precision.

The more overtly affectionate Viennese recording of KV 453 dates from 1960 and features another ad-hoc group, this time selected by Gulda himself, under Paul Angerer, a Hans Swarowsky protégé who was then rapidly establishing his conducting credentials having spent the early part of his career playing viola in the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande and Vienna Symphony Orchestra.

Mozart’s piano sonatas are often treated as second-class citizens by comparison with the concertos, yet for Gulda they were an essential part of his creative output. ‘The sonatas are private preliminary conversations leading to the operas,’ he reasoned. Gulda’s first recordings for Decca were captured in 1947 and the following year he turned his hands to Chopin and Mozart’s KV 576 Sonata, a reading whose micro-inflected tonal purity and seamless cantabile is reminiscent of Dinu Lipatti.

Bringing Gulda’s lifelong devotion to Mozart full close, he once expressed a peculiar desire to die on Mozart’s birthday. Remarkably, on 27 January 2000, exactly 244 years after Mozart was born, Gulda passed away, aged 69.

At the age of ten Zhu Xiao-Mei entered the Peking Conservatory where her brilliant studies were interrupted by the years of the Cultural Revolution. She was sent to a re-education camp on the border of Inner Mongolia for five years. On returning to Peking, she completed her studies and left China as soon as the regime gave its first signs of opening to the outside world. In 1980 she emigrated to the United States, settling in Paris in 1984. Zhu Ziao-Mei gives few concerts, appearing in public usually to perform demanding works: ‘mountains of the soul’.

”Evidence of fingers exceptionally vigorous, nimble and purposeful." BBC Music Magazine

“He plays with a light, sparkling touch and singing melodies, with tasteful and unexaggerated expression." Fanfare

For more than ten years Gottlieb Wallisch has captivated audiences from many of the world’s major concert platforms with his playing. Wallisch’s debut on Linn Records, ‘Mozart in Vienna’, features a selection of Mozart’s best-loved works, all composed in Vienna during one of the composer’s most fruitful periods: 1781-1791.

Wallisch expertly demonstrates Mozart’s quintessential style: his skill at improvisation (Fantasie KV 397), his humour (Variationen KV 455) and his more intimate, melancholic side (Rondo KV 511).

Two of Mozart’s finest sonatas are also included and they allow Gottlieb to display his deep understanding of the music of his fellow Austrian, as well as his impressive technical and interpretative skills.

The Viennese pianist has performed this repertoire internationally to great acclaim: “Wallisch proved himself to be an exceptional performer of Mozart” (Neue Ruhr Zeitung).

Recorded in St George’s, Bristol, which is regarded as one of the best chamber venues in Britain, Gottlieb gives a stylish and individual performance of some of Mozart’s finest piano works.

Born into a family of Viennese musicians, Gottlieb Wallisch is a competition prizewinner and a respected artist in the Viennese piano tradition.

Gottlieb Wallisch has performed with many leading orchestras including Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, the London Philharmonic Youth Orchestra and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. He has performed at prestigious London venues Wigmore Hall and Queen Elizabeth Hall.

Gottlieb participated in the international cycle "Rising Stars" and gave solo recitals in many European capitals as well as New York’s Carnegie Hall.

Linda Nicholson is one of the foremost keyboard players specialising in the performance of baroque, classical and early romantic music on instruments of the period. On this recording she plays a fortepiano by Anton Walter, built in Vienna, circa 1797.

This recording of Mozart's Piano Sonatas was the esteemed pianist Andreas Haefliger's first for Avie. Hailing from one of Europe’s musically elite families, Haefliger’s music background has firmly steeped him in the Austro-Germanic tradition. His intellectual interpretations of the music of Mozart, Beethoven and Schumann have been noted for his acute sensitivity and breathtaking technical precision.