Gil Sullivan – Hidden Voices, Mozart Piano Sonatas, Volume VI (2025) [FLAC 24bit/96kHz]

Gil Sullivan - Hidden Voices, Mozart Piano Sonatas, Volume VI (2025) [FLAC 24bit/96kHz] Download

Choppy and without legato”! This is how Beethoven described Mozart’s playing years after his death. The way we hear Mozart today has become such a cliché that it is hard to imagine Mozart being played today in the way Beethoven described. Nor can we hear his full originality if he is always played in the same clichéd way. No one is more qualified than Beethoven to make that decision, and so this is probably the closest we will get to a “recording” of Mozart playing. Sweet, pretty, right-handed playing (where everything in the left hand is nothing more than mere accompaniment), with all the competition fingers smoothly and effortlessly ironing out all Mozart’s eccentricities, has become the norm, with repeated phrases and whole sections always played in exactly the same way!When I recently heard one of the greats of our time play K284, of course I thought the playing was wonderful, although I unexpectedly realized that I admired this much more than Mozart’s actual music. I think this sums up my basic philosophy about Mozart; his music today is just a vehicle for beautiful, slick piano/orchestral/instrumental playing, rather than Mozart’s music – with all its exuberant eccentricities, its joie de vivre, its extemporaneous, spontaneous qualities and its choppy, jerky dynamics (especially in the slow movements) – being at the heart of what you listen to.

We know that Mozart was arguably the greatest improviser in history, and this element should be quite evident in the performance of his music. A score sent to the publisher on Monday would have looked very different the following Friday, so nothing about his music should be set in stone! Playing a phrase or a whole section exactly the same way twice is a cardinal sin, and in my opinion the music temporarily stagnates; it stops moving forward when this happens.

Tracklist:

01. Gil Sullivan – Mozart: Piano Sonata No. 5 in G Major, K283: I. Allegro (04:47)
02. Gil Sullivan – Mozart: Piano Sonata No. 5 in G Major, K283: II. Andante (05:36)
03. Gil Sullivan – Mozart: Piano Sonata No. 5 in G Major, K283: III. Presto (04:24)
04. Gil Sullivan – Mozart: Piano Sonata No. 17 in F Major, K547a: I. Allegro (06:41)
05. Gil Sullivan – Mozart: Piano Sonata No. 17 in F Major, K547a: II. Allegretto (02:36)
06. Gil Sullivan – Mozart: Piano Sonata No. 17 in F Major, K547a: III. 6 Variations on an Allegretto (07:59)
07. Gil Sullivan – Mozart: Piano Sonata No. 6 in D Major, K284, “Dürnitz”: I. Allegro (05:51)
08. Gil Sullivan – Mozart: Piano Sonata No. 6 in D Major, K284, “Dürnitz”: II. Rondeau en polonaise – Andante (04:45)
09. Gil Sullivan – Mozart: Piano Sonata No. 6 in D Major, K284, “Dürnitz”: III. Tema con variazione – Andante (20:48)