72 / 84
Period instruments are perfectly suited
to playing Mozart’s music, although the
composer also to tries to go to the very
limits of their potential. Even today, this
represents a challenge which makes each
performance interesting.
Period instruments demand special study on the part of the performer,
but what is astonishing is that that they give him, in return, an ease
in matters of interpretation which does more than merely justify
their use. They seem to speak for themselves and to impose a “natural
interpretation”. The limitation of instruments which cannot modulate
is compensated, for example, in terms of intonation, by another form
of purity and precision: such instruments can play using “natural
temperament”, thus producing perfect intervals, like sung intervals,
which distinguish between sharps and flats, unlike modern instruments
which take the temperament of the piano as the model for their tuning.