REVEIWS: Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin, Mozart – Sonata in G K301; Adagio in E K261; Sonata in A K526
Nicely, the two main works chosen for this concert represent both the first maturity and the final statement of what Mozart considered not violin sonatas but sonatas for piano and violin.
We know he thought that way because the ones he composed before K 301 were really piano sonatas with optional, mostly slight, decorative violin parts whose notes tended to be obscured within the middle register beneath the centre-stage notes of the pianist’s right hand.
Until K 301 in G it was the first in a set of six composed in 1778 and featured, properly for the first time, a more balanced partnership between the two instruments.
This equality was beautifully realised by Japanese pianist Tadashi Imai and the young Dutch violinist Mathieu van Bellen. Perhaps their positioning – with van Bellen beside the keyboard – suggested the primacy of the violin, and Imai was occasionally a little deferential, notably in confining certain lyrical bass lines that seemed begging to be let out. Yet he gave these passages a thoroughly energetic voice – however quiet – which sang away steadily at a quarter of the pace of the giddy exchanges between his right hand and the violin.
If such alternating exchanges characterised the new piano- violin parity in 1778, eight years later Mozart had developed the relationship into something balanced with refined artistic instinct between independence and co-dependence in his great final sonata, the Bach-inspired A major Sonata K 526.
As he did in K 301 – and in the short AdagioK 261 – violinist van Bellen combined a warm, sweet tone with a highly alert engagement, this matched by Imai, above all in the work's rich counterpoint.
After the long, slow, second movement, which they tapped for an emotional sweep akin to one of Mozart's concerto Andantes, they gleefully attacked the programme's fastest playing in the final Presto. In their hands, the cascades of flying notes ranged from gossamer flightiness to powerful, torque-driven rushes, bringing this very enjoyable Mozart recital to a kind of headlong, joyous end.
