Mozart: Complete Piano Sonatas

Although South Korean pianist Yeol Eum Son was 35 when she began making this recording of Mozart’s 18 piano sonatas, her interpretations had already been three decades in the making. “These were among the very first pieces I started to play on the piano, aged three and a half or four,” Son says. “And when I did my very first recital at five and a half I played a Mozart sonata too.” Time has not dulled Son’s enthusiasm for these elegant, enchantingly tuneful pieces. In shaping her view of them, she would draw on other artists’ recordings, especially those of the great Hungarian pianist Lili Kraus. More often, though, Son looked to the bristlingly theatrical world of Mozart’s operas for inspiration. “My parents had a few LPs of the operas, and at the age of seven I was listening to those,” she remembers. It’s unsurprising, therefore, that Son’s personal style in Mozart is so strikingly eventful and dramatic, a far cry from the smoothness and delicacy some pianists offer. “Mozart’s sonatas remind me so much of his operas, with their own scenes, plots and personalities,” she explains. “They are highly dramatic, and I really wanted to recreate that.” Partly because Mozart was a brilliant pianist himself, his sonatas also place considerable demands on keyboard technique. “A few of the sonatas are more technically demanding, the two minor-key sonatas in particular,” Son comments. “But the main difficulty lies in making all the notes heard all the time.” The type of instrument Son plays is all-important. Her choice is a modern Steinway grand, a much bigger instrument than the modest fortepiano Mozart used for composing the sonatas. “I love period instruments, and I love playing on them,” Son says. “But I think Mozart would have dreamed about an instrument like a Steinway, which allows a much wider range of touch and articulation.” Son is, however, not a fan of micromanaging Mozart’s music or of planning too much detail in advance of a performance or recording. “I think that was quite tricky for my producer in the studio, because I kept doing different things,” she says. “But he fortunately loved that I wanted to keep being fresh and spontaneous.” That spontaneity, Son feels, comes from the music itself and from Mozart’s habit of improvising a lot at the keyboard before committing the final version of a sonata to paper. “I would have a completely different, less improvisational attitude when playing Beethoven, for example. In Beethoven, there is a much more conscious contemplation of the actual composing process. I feel I need to reflect that in my playing.” So where in Son’s new recording of the sonatas, spanning over six hours of music, should a listener start? “It’s so difficult to say, because the sonatas are all very different,” she muses. “But I particularly like No. 16, the little C major Sonata, K545. The simplicity of it is something totally heavenly. I think it represents a lot of sides of Mozart and is a good entry point.” For all the vividness and vitality in Mozart’s piano sonatas it can, Son adds, be difficult to pin down precisely the character of the composer behind the music. “Mozart is very passionate, and there is undoubtedly a lot of personality in his music,” she ventures. “But in the end he is not into just one emotion or one situation. He flies over many emotions and situations, and in that sense he is transcendent. He’s a free spirit.”