Podger and Cooper Release Their Latest Mozart Sonata Series
Mozart: Complete Sonatas for Keyboard and Violin, Vol. 6. Sonatas K. 376, 296, 27, 377. Rachel Podger, violin; Gary Cooper, fortepiano. (Channel Classics)
In their ongoing Mozart sonata series, Gary Cooper and Rachel Podger have arranged their programs for utmost contrast and diversity, with each volume combining three mature sonatas with an early one. K. 27, written when Mozart was ten, is charming, simple but profusely ornamented. The slow first movement sings, the second is sprightly with some good, imitative counterpoint and an expressive middle section in minor. Naturally, the piano predominates. It is interesting to see that Mozart makes the two instruments increasingly equal in the later sonatas. K. 296, written in 1788 (22 years after K. 27) is bright and cheerful, with a folksong-like slow movement, whose contrasting climactic middle section belongs entirely to the violin. Both K. 376 and 377, written in 1781 for Mozart's student Josepha Auernhammer, are in F major and similar in structure, but quite different in mood and character.
The former is genial and carefree, with a lyrical, flowing, serene slow movement. The latter has an impetuous first movement followed by one of Mozart's greatest andantes: a melancholy theme and variations in D minor, whose mournfulness is made even more affecting by a burst of sunshine in D major after an intensely dramatic climax. The playing is technically excellent, singly and together, but perhaps too carefully thought out and, though undoubtedly authentic, somewhat problematic in tone and style. From the sound of the open strings, Podger seems to play a modern violin whose timbre does not blend well with the piano's. True to period practice, she uses vibrato sparingly and makes abundant swells but, despite her fine bowing technique, she cannot avoid making many false accents. The players' phrasing is elegant, but their expressiveness is sometimes at odds and, like their contrasts and attacks, frequently exaggerated.
But it is their ornamentation that is most excessive. It threatens to obliterate the original music and sounds planned and artificial instead of spontaneously improvised. In the repeats—all meticulously observed—the pianist often seems to be playing a whole new piece.
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