First Mozart

These days, I am having the privilege and fun of supporting a piano student in his first serious efforts at engaging with Mozart. He has played two or three Beethoven sonatas and done so rather well. A couple of lessons into his Mozart experience, he initiated a thoughtful conversation about how playing Mozart is distinctly different from playing Beethoven.

In Beethoven, there are many details to which the pianist must constantly pay attention. The type of change that occurs in the music is characterized by many different types of detail that create an expressive type of beauty from one moment to the next. The first movement of the Pathetique Sonata is a clear example of this.

The beauty of Mozart, on the other hand, is a matter of aesthetics - a matter of pattern, balance, and proportion. (Dr. Kaplinsky taught me this comparison many years ago.) What this means for the pianist is consistent emphasis on clarity and phrasing. This requires getting your ears around all the turns of Mozart's melodies and disciplining your hands and feet so that you can keep your listeners deftly moving along those melodies, too. Solomon's playing of K. 576 gives an idea of this.  

Playing either composers' music is demanding. In Beethoven, you have to keep up with the pace of change. And you're performance will never rise to the level of the goodness of the music. In Mozart, you have to stay in that focused Mozart mode I just described. It has been likened unto an act of musical hygiene. Your playing of Mozart will reveal, pretty much in every moment of the performance, your commitment to good planning, your responsiveness, your sense of legato, and your ability and willingness to serve the composer by applying the parts of your brain and heart his music requires. Exposure in the pure light of Mozart's genius will illuminate the true state of your musicianship.