As professor at the Royal Academy of Music, it is logical that
South African-born Daniel-Ben Pienaar’s cycle of Mozart’s
piano sonatas should have been recorded in The Duke’s
Hall, the main concert hall of that noble institute. Hearing
this acoustic again has me dripping with nostalgia. The place
has been renovated since I was a student there in the 1980s,
but I have the hall’s chameleon acoustic written into
my musical reference DNA and hearing this has me wondering why
it doesn’t appear more often as a professional recording
venue. By no means too vast to swamp a solo recital or chamber
music concert in excessive resonance, it also seemed large-scale
enough to house vast forces, and I remember radio broadcasts
from the time we performed some of Messiaen’s most monumental
works sounding as good as from any similarly sized concert hall.
Perhaps they’ve solved the traffic noise problem from
Marylebone Road, or isolated the place from vibrations coming
from passing trains on the Bakerloo underground line, or perhaps
these Mozart recordings were indeed lonely nocturnal sessions.
Either way, the recordings sound very good indeed, made under
the benign bronze gaze of Sir Henry Wood’s bust, present
at all times except when casting his alloy aura over the Proms
concert season in the altogether different acoustic of the Albert
Hall.
I’ve been living with Daniel-Ben Pienaar’s Mozart
for a while now, and have been enjoying it greatly. His approach
is brisk and unsentimental, with an overall timing for the entire
set of 4:48:18, which tells something of the story against my
main reference, that of Mitsuko Uchida on Philips which comes
in at 5:25:10. An observation - or lack of observation of repeats
in the second section of movements will also play a role in
these differences, so if this is something which bothers you
then this may be a consideration. Pienaar’s timings are
more comparable with those of Ronald Brautigam on his BIS cycle
played on a historical fortepiano, and even then he is swifter
more often than not. This is not to say that his playing is
brusque or insensitive, but taking perhaps the most famous of
Mozart’s piano sonata movements as an example, the opening
Allegro of the Sonata No. 16 K545 ‘Für
Änfänger’, he drives forward at a considerable
pace, making the music more exciting than merely charming, introducing
drama into the ornamented lines and the transitional modulations.
Uchida keeps the music-box lightness of the piece more intact,
beautifully handled, but with a less daring emotional range.
Pienaar also gives the impression of ‘speeding-up’
just a little as the music progresses. This is a side-effect
of a rubato which takes, and then delays the giving back of
musical time. This can be heard in the second movement of the
same sonata, the delicate Andante. The tempo is
stable, but with a little more air given to the opening bars
and a more onward moving feel to the following phrases there
is a sense of ‘leaning forward’ just a little more
than one might expect. This is less a criticism than an observation.
Each time I thought I might be catching Pienaar stretching his
tempi a little too much for good taste I found myself corrected
on listening properly. In this same movement Uchida now sounds
slow and pedestrian by comparison, still very beautiful, but
providing us more with the chocolate box stereotype of Mozart,
rather than drawing out the subtle turbulence in the music -
playing it as we now might imagine Mozart might have played
it himself, challenging his audiences and perhaps even shocking
them. Just listen to what Pienaar does with the return to the
home key at 4:05, holding a little extra suspension of the leading
note and giving us a frisson of bi-tonality which would have
had even Bartók looking up from his Népszava.
This is just one sonata, and a few small examples, but this
set is full of this kind of interest. Mozart’s piano sonatas
have a reputation for a certain kind of ‘easiness’;
the kind which has music teachers putting them in front of their
students so that they can play some ‘real’ music
early on. This is all well and good, but it takes someone like
Daniel-Ben Pienaar to come along and show us that there is a
good deal more to be discovered. Many sets of this kind are
presented chronologically, but Pienaar makes a particular virtue
of the sonata’s traversal of Mozart’s creative lifetime,
and most of the discs are titled along the lines of period and
location for each subset. He also writes his own intelligent
and informative booklet notes, tackling the subject of playing
18th century music on what is essentially a 19th
or even 20th century instrument, and taking an approachable
look behind the musical notes with some historical context and
brief analysis.
There are numerous complete cycles of Mozart’s piano sonatas,
and of those I’ve had at one time or another that with
Lili
Kraus has alas gone by the wayside. This is a nice recording
and vintage performance, but I never really felt much ‘connection’
with her playing of the pieces. I’ve kept the faith with
Ronald
Brautigam’s excellent fortepiano set on the BIS label,
but am reluctant to make too many comparisons due to the differing
character of the instruments used. A review of my modern instrument
reference with Mitsuku Uchida on Philips can be found here.
I still very much admire her solo Mozart playing, but each time
I return to one of these pieces after hearing Daniel-Ben Pienaar
she seems entirely blown out of the water. You may not always
want high drama in your Mozart, but when it comes to something
like the Fantasie K475 in C minor it’s like discovering
an entirely new piece. Uchida is quiet and intimate where Pienaar
is mysterious and full of surprises in the opening minutes,
finding little accents and harmonic emphases and bringing little
Mozart face to face with a rather startled looking Beethoven.
He isn’t shy of the lyrical elements in this and the other
pieces, but the undercurrent is more one of narrative than of
glimmering beauty - if you open Pienaar’s chocolate box
your selection won’t always be creamy and sweetly fragrant.
Take those tremuli in the right hand where the music
takes off at 4:21. Pienaar gives them full weight: the mechanics
of a scene-change at the opera at full tilt into the stormy
sea, where Uchida seems almost more apologetic, pointing our
attention to the melodramatic two-note bass line but only too
glad to return to safer waters as soon as possible.
I could go on and on with comparisons of one sort or another,
but the plain truth is I think Daniel-Ben Pienaar’s Mozart
piano sonatas could entirely revolutionise the way you experience
these pieces, and indeed Mozart in general. There is so much
about Mozart that we think we know; impressions and perceptions
more often than not gained from the tourist sales-brochure idea
most people will give you if asked on the street. Historical
truth can teach us more, and there is a deal more information
around for those who are willing to make just a little more
effort. What Daniel-Ben Pienaar teaches us is that there is
a good deal more mud and substance to Mozart’s piano sonatas
than most of us suspected, and as a result he has given us a
cycle which will make it tough to return to old favourites.
As a final reference I brought out one of my Decca remnants,
another superb Mozart exponent Andras Schiff. His Andante
grazioso opening to the Sonata No. 11 K331 ‘Alla
Turca’ is the one most likely to bring tears to my
eyes if the mood takes, and even though Pienaar is alive to
the music’s simple perfection his onward momentum does
rob the music a little of the kind of innocent charm which makes
it so moving. Schiff’s playing floats on a different kind
of lightness to Uchida’s and will always retain its appeal
to me, though I relish Pienaar’s sense of lively and percussive
fun in the ‘Turkish’ aspects of the last movement
in this sonata. The very last work, the Sonata No. 18 K576
in D major is played masterfully by Schiff, but with Pienaar’s
more earthy grounding we are given a shot of energy and joyous
street bustle in the opening Allegro and final Allegretto
to go along with the transparent delicacy which is essential
to the work, and which both pianists deliver marvellously. The
central Adagio is another litmus indicator, and Pienaar
comes up trumps with beautifully described lines and undulations,
the conversational element of the music brought forward without
taking away from Mozart’s crystalline magic.
I have to say I am surprised and delighted by this cycle of
Mozart’s piano sonatas: surprised by the amount of substance
and sheer musical grit I’ve missed in so many other performances,
and delighted to discover so much more Mozart I had previously
felt carried less musical muscle than, say, the piano concertos.
Pienaar knows how to point a wise finger to the heart of each
movement of each sonata, highlighting the crucial highlight
you just know had to be the moment which made Mozart smile to
himself as he played and sketched. Pienaar throws away the velvet-lined
glass-covered treasure chest of musical jewels to which we’ve
been used, and introduces us to a Mozart who tickles us under
the chin with a roll of manuscript paper before sitting down
and challenging us to a duel of wits we know we can’t
win. Was that a whiff of wet ink you caught just then …?
Dominy Clements
Listing
CD 1 [57:50]
Sonata No. 1 K279 in C major (1775) [11:55]
Sonata No. 2 K280 in F major (1775) [12:51]
Sonata No. 3 K281 in B flat major (1775) [11:22]
Sonata No. 4 K282 in E flat major (1775) [11:32]
Sonata No. 5 K283 in G major (1775) [10:10]
CD 2 [65:46]
Sonata No. 6 K284 ‘Dürnitz’ in D major (1775)
[24:00]
Sonata No. 7 K309 in C major (1777) [14:55]
Sonata No. 8 K311 in D major (1777) [13:54]
Sonata No. 9 K310 in A minor (1778) [12:55]
CD 3 [74:05]
Sonata No. 10 K330 in C major (1783) [17:46]
Sonata No. 11 K331 ‘Alla Turca’ in A major (1783)
[21:44]
Sonata No. 12 K332 in F major (1783) [16:03]
Sonata No. 13 K333 in B flat major (1783) [18:29]
CD 4 [49:48]
Fantasie K475 in C minor (1785) [11:00]
Sonata No. 14 K457 in C minor (1784) [17:04]
Sonata No. 15 K533/494 in F major (1786/88) [21:42]
CD 5 [40:49]
Sonata No. 16 K545 ‘Für Änfänger’
in C major (1788) [9:57]
Sonata No. 17 K570 in B flat major (1789) [16:45]
Sonata No. 18 K576 in D major (1789) [14:05]
Daniel-Ben Pienaar (piano)
