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MOZART_K.457, K.475, K.332 / CLEMENTI_OP.34 No.2 15
What do you think of Yvonne Lefébure’s comparison of the
Fantasy
to a
“miniature opera”, and of Alfred Cortot’s comment : “All of Don Giovanni
is in it”?
A.C.
:They’re both right. One thing is certain, and I believe this profoundly, all of Mozart’s
music is music for the theater. There are always characters, and this makes playing
Mozart’s
Sonatas
much more difficult than if you were approaching them as merely
sonatas. You have to picture characters, dramatic situations.
And what a surprising concurrence in the
Fantasy
between the highly-
improvised discourse and the classical rigour of the construction…
A.C.
: It’s very classical. I believe Beethoven could have written this
Fantasy.
And what is your relationship to
Sonata
K.457 now?
A.C.
: Like the
Fantasy
, it intimidated me a great deal. And indeed one can be, because
the
Allegro
is surprisingly violent at times. The slowmovement is amiracle of balance and
lyricism. And the finale, so unsettling…
What changed in Mozart’s style between the K.331 and 333
Sonatas
,
written in 1778, and these two works in C Minor, written in late 1784 for
the
Sonata
and 1785 for the
Fantasy
?
A.C.
: Before then, Mozart wrote music that was often light-hearted, enjoyable, playful;
in these newworks one senses that time has gone by, that the experience of life has left
itsmark. It’s normal that he discovered dramatic overtones, because themore time goes
by, the more dramatic life becomes, and this is the case for almost everyone… The vocal
dimension of the writing is also striking, for example in the
Adagio
of the
Sonata
; words
could almost be added to it.