Hidden Voices: Mozart Piano Sonatas, Volume II is a follow up to pianist Gil Sullivan’s previous album of Mozart Piano Sonatas Volume I on Hunnia Records. This album is available Stereo DSD 512, DSD 256, DSD 128, DSD 64 and DXD only from NativeDSD.  It is a DSD Exclusive, Not Available on SACD release.

Gil Sullivan says “Not all great composers were great pianists, or indeed, performers at all, in that – due to pianistic limitations, they were often not the best interpreters of their own music. Haydn was an average pianist, and perhaps a better violinist, but certainly not a ‘performer’ of the same ilk as his close friend and contemporary – Mozart. Schumann could have been a great pianist, but irreparably damaged his hand in his early 20s, living vicariously through his pianist wife Clara, whilst Brahms was a great pianist in his youth, but hated practicing, so rarely performed in later life. During a performance of his 2nd Piano Concerto, Liszt (in the audience) said he preferred von Bülow’s playing of this concerto, as the composer apparently played fistfuls of wrong notes.

Schubert was not a performer, though serviceably accompanied his own songs in small soirees known today as Schubertiads. Of his ‘Wanderer Fantasie’, he once declared – “Let the devil play that!”. Neither Tchaikovsky, Wagner, Berlioz, Bizet, Dvorak, Faure, Mahler, Debussy nor Ravel were performers, though Bruckner was apparently a great organist. Two important issues arise here; firstly, one can only ‘guesstimate’ what a performance of especially those 18th Century composers could be like. Secondly, approaching the 20th Century, we can see the composer/performer was more and more a fast-dying breed.

Of our list above, all were improvisors of sorts, but Mozart – arguably the greatest in history – stands beside perhaps only two, of whom legends abound of the prowess of Bach and Beethoven. Therefore, when listening to a performance of Mozart’s music, this improvisatory aspect should penetrate the very syntax and sinews of his music, and be a wholly inextricable, identifiable element. His astonishingly fertile imagination more than amply implies there should be so much more to performing his music than the routinely robotic and unstylistic readings we are generally served up today.”

Gil Sullivan, Piano