Performer
Daniel Barenboim

Daniel Barenboim, Buenos Aires-born child prodigy and world-famous, if sometimes controversial conductor, tends to be known these days for commanding the world's orchestras or leading his own admirable experiment in race relations, the East-Western Divan Orchestra, so it is refreshing to see him here returning to his roots. It was on the piano that he gave his first recital aged five, and with which he took the classical world by storm in his teens, so it is perhaps fitting that here he plays the work of another musician whose gift was in evidence from the outset; Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Mozart produced a great canon of chamber music from the age of 12 right up to his death, largely built on innovations coined by Josef Haydn. His Piano Sonatas reflect that for the first half of his career he was a performer rather than a composer, which impelled him to compose works of relative simplicity, preferring clarity over unnecessarily fancy finger-work. In addition, his Piano Sonatas were largely produced for the 'home market' parlour or chamber pieces that naturally operated on a smaller scale than some of his other, more monumental works. Sadly, most of Mozart's 18 Piano Sonatas have been somewhat neglected by performers and audiences alike, largely because they tend to have less of the colour and emotional intensity of later, nineteenth-century works, but they possess an austere charm and elegance that has led to a small but significant renaissance of interest in them in recent years.

Here, Daniel Barenboim performs the K457 in C minor, written during Mozart's time in Vienna during the autumn of 1784, and the K457a in F major, thought to have been written in Vienna in the summer of 1788.