Piano Sonata No. 8 in D Major, K311
Piano Sonata No. 4 in E-flat Major, K282
Piano Sonata No. 1 in C Major, K279
Piano Sonata No. 6 in D Major, K284

The sonatas on this CD (except K311, this sonata was written in Mannheim) were composed in Munich as part of a cycle encompassing six sonatas. Mozart found himself in the Bavarian capital over the winter of 1774-1775 to produce his opera La finta giardiniera. The degree of imagination that Mozart, as a youth of 18 or 19, drew upon in his approach to the sonata genre is truly astounding. Each of these works – which based on their extensive virtuoso demands were presumably written for his own use – offers an individual and profoundly original solution to the specific problems of the genre, and if the young composer perhaps lacks something in his mastery of the form compared with his later works, it is well compensated for by his sheer wealth of imagination. What is more, we read in Mozart’s correspondence that he repeatedly performed the works himself from memory, which was not a given in those days.

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Recording: Grand Auditorium, Conservatoire de la ville de Luxembourg, August 2016. Piano: Steinway D-573968 with PES Butterfly D SET from Instrumagic.