MOZART ALLA GUITAR

 For the first time on two viennese guitars:

A modern revival of Vienna’s Zeitgeist

4 PIANO SONATAS FOR VIENNESE GUITARS

No. 10 KV 330 - No. 5 KV 283 - No. 4 KV 282 - No. 11 KV 331

Duo Morat-Fergo; Viennese guitars

New album on Challenge Classics - released October 8th 2021

Some Mozart connoisseurs might wrinkle their brows at the idea of two guitars replacing Mozart’s intended instrument for these sonatas, a fortepiano whose tone is produced in a very different way to the plucking of a guitar’s string.
But the reality is that the sound quality of the instruments Mozart played is at least as distantly removed from the modern Steinway grand concert as it is from the Viennese guitar.

How did the fortepiano sound in Mozart’s time? The diversity of keyboard instruments was high: while the cembalo was still in use till around 1795,
Mozart used a clavichord to compose. The pianoforte, the predecessor of
the grand piano, was a relatively new instrument and was still undergoing changes. It had very specific sound properties: a sharp articulation, a short sustain somewhere between a cembalo and a grand piano, a clear bass register, generally a brighter and more transparent sound colour. Mozart intended his piano sonatas for this sound.

The smaller and earlier sonatas KV 282 and 283 bring to mind typical characteristics of the cembalo, like dynamic changes, articulation and ornamentation, while the sonatas KV 330 and 331 are clearly more pianistic. One could imagine that his sonatas, mainly composed for small domestic audiences, were performed on all sorts of different keyboard instruments, each one highlighting different aspects and characteristics of the score. The listener in the audience would not have just “one” piano sound in his ear, but was used to a wide soundscape of colours. The shorter duration of the notes, as well as the delicacy and richness of colours found in the sound world of the guitar, are quite close to those of the late 18th Century fortepianos that Mozart would have known, while the dynamic range of the guitar would be very much at home in the salons and smaller concert venues of that time. Listening to the sonatas played on two guitars might be exotic, but the plucked sound fits in with the family of keyboard instruments.