Orli Shaham: Mozart Piano Sonatas Vol. 5/6
Canary Classics

Renowned pianist Orli Shaham brings her Mozart cycle to an immensely satisfying close with this two-volume set of five sonatas. Her love affair with the composer began, as mentioned by Donald Rosenberg in liner notes, when as a three-year-old she heard her brother practicing the Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor, K.466 at the family home in Israel and, enthralled, vowed that she would one day play the piece herself. At the age of six, she tackled the Sonata No. 16 in C major, K.545 and two years later the Piano Sonata No. 4 in E-flat major, K.282. In time, she would perform many of his twenty-seven piano concertos and all eighteen of the piano sonatas.

Shaham, who's on the piano and chamber music faculty at The Juilliard School, has appeared with orchestras around the world, but hearing her perform alone allows her artistry to be fully appreciated. It's worth noting that as much of a Mozart expert as she is, her repertoire is broad, as shown by a discography that includes material by Brahms, Prokofiev, Saint-Saëns, John Adams, and Steven Mackey.

The new release's fifth volume presents three sonatas, the C Major, No. 7, K.309, the D Major, No. 8, K.311, and the C Major, No. 10, K.330; volume six features a formidable pair, the C minor, No. 14, K.457 and the F Major, No. 15, K.533/494. Nearly two hours in total, the music was recorded in August 2019 and September 2020 at Mechanics Hall in Worcester with Shaham playing a Hamburg Steinway. While these three-movement sonatas are generally “formulaic” in their adherence to traditional forms, they're also subtly different from one another and capable of surprise.

The delight Shaham feels playing this material comes through at every exhilarating moment. Witnessing the authority of her execution and lucid grasp, technical mastery, and prodigious command of the material is like watching an Olympic gymnast and marveling at the seeming ease with which stupendous feats are achieved, such effortlessness deceptive for masking the years of practice needed to reach that level. Enhancing her interpretations is her deep immersion into their history and her attempt to, as much as someone can from such a temporal and geographical distance, get under Mozart's skin and into his mind; she's someone who doesn't simply read the notes but instead wholly inhabits the music's world to bring it to its greatest possible realization.

Any number of examples testify to the high calibre of these renditions—her unhurried handling of the seventh's graceful andante, the fluidity with which she delivers the eighth's high-velocity allegro, her eloquent voicing of its delicate andante and the beguiling charm of its rondeau, the enticing effervescence of the tenth's allegro, the absorbing hush of its andante, and so on. As rewarding is the sixth volume for the expressiveness of the fourteenth's adagio, the élan of the fifteenth's breezy allegro, and the quiet majesty of its andante.

April 2024