In this new Pure DSD 256 Bundle, NativeDSD brings you Volume 4, 5 & 6 of Hidden Voices: Mozart Piano Sonatas performed by pianist Gil Sullivan. By purchasing these albums together, you will save 30% on each one

Click here for the DSD Bundle of Volumes I, II and III.

“Choppy and no legato”! This was Beethoven’s description of Mozart’s playing years after the latter’s death. The way we hear Mozart nowadays has become such a cliché, it’s virtually impossible to ever dream of Mozart today being played in the way Beethoven describes. Nor are we able to hear all his originality when it is always played the same, clichéd way. No one could ever be more qualified than Beethoven to make this call, therefore this is arguably the closest we will ever come to a ‘recording’ of Mozart’s playing. The sweet, pretty, right-handed (where everything in the left hand is nothing more than a mere accompaniment) playing, with all those competition fingers smoothly & effortlessly ironing out all Mozart’s eccentricities, has become the norm, where repeated phrases and whole sections are always played exactly the same way!

Recently listening to one of the greats of our time playing K284, I naturally found the playing wonderful, though unexpectedly observed myself admiring this much more than Mozart’s actual music. I think this sums up my basic philosophy about Mozart; his music today has become just a vehicle for beautiful, smooth piano/orchestral/instrumental playing, instead of Mozart’s music – with all it’s effervescent eccentricities, it’s joie de vivre, it’s extemporaneous, spontaneous qualities, plus its hiccuped, jolted and jerky dynamics (especially in the slow movements) – all being at the centre of what one listens to.

We know Mozart was arguably the greatest improviser in history, and this element should be glaringly obvious in the performance of his music. A score posted to the publisher on Monday may well have been quite different had he sent it the following Friday, so nothing about his music should ever be set in stone! To play a phrase or whole section twice exactly the same way is a cardinal sin, and in my view, the music momentarily stagnates; it ceases to move forward when this happens.

In this cycle of the complete Mozart Piano Sonatas, I have – in some small way – tried to strip back all the Botox, the lip gloss, the false eyelashes, the mascara and makeup, and – though admittedly on a modern Steinway – get back to Mozart in the raw!

Gil Sullivan, Piano