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MOZART_SONATES K.331, 280, 333 17
In the Sonata in
F major K.280
, the slowmovement is very grave. Such gravity
is disconcerting coming from an 18-year-old composer.
Yes but the score's gravity and depth have no hard edges. Mozart was not like Schumann
a few decades later, haunted by a fear of madness, the madness of the Carnival depicting
characters the composer would have liked to be. Although Mozart was no saint, that kind of
violence is entirely foreign to him.
In this sonata, the first movement is carried by an incredible youthful momentum and joie de
vivre. Then suddenly the adagio in F minor brings a sort of cloud of melancholy. It's tempting
to compare it with the slowmovement in the
Piano Concerto in A major K.488
; that is in F sharp
minor and has a construction identical to the sonata's.
Are we still in the Classicist spirit here or are we already in the Romantic?
Most certainly Romantic! But that term can also be applied to many earlier works. Take, for
example, Johann-Sebastian Bach's
Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue in D minor, BWV 903
. In the
recitative of the
Fantasia
, the modulations, changes of expression, take us right into Roman-
ticism. Moreover you have to play it in a very improvised style of the kind you find nearly a
century and a half later in Saint-Saëns's second
Piano Concerto
.
Do you see other “descendants” of Mozart?
There are many! Schubert, Beethoven… and in the 20
th
century the French musician Poulenc,
who seems to me to feel a need for light comparable to Mozart's. I knew Poulenc and he
expressedanextraordinary joiede vivre. HeadoredMozart. InPoulenc I sense the samepleasures,
perhaps also a certain facility, if not facileness. He knewhow tomix entertainment and gravity.
Listen to his opera
Le Dialogue des Carmélites
, which to me is the last of the great operas.