Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin
Mozart
– Piano Sonatas 6-8 (K284, K309, K310)
Coincidentally, it was Mothers Day, and this second instalment of Fionnuala Moynihan’s survey of the complete Mozart piano sonatas included K 310 in A minor which the pianist suggested was inspired by Mozart’s mother.
Sadly, the inspiration followed her death in Paris in 1778 while the two were staying there on tour. Whether because of his grief, or because of other depressing aspects of the tour, or due to the influence of some of the composers he had met in Paris, this was the first sonata composed in a minor key, and the first minor-key work of any kind in five years.
It is certainly a work full of anguish. Einstein calls A minor Mozart’s key of despair and describes the sonata as “dramatic and full of unrelieved darkness”. Moynihan captured this atmosphere well throughout, without overstatement, including the agitated outburst which suddenly disrupts the slow movement.
It is also full of severe technical demands. Moynihan, although not as secure on this occasion as she was in the first recital, met these challenges with a calm fluidity of execution that successfully kept the spirit and not the difficulty to the fore. With this in mind, the best moments in the rest of the recital came in the slow movements (K 284 in D and K 309 in C) whose repose and tranquil grace she conveyed with the same understated quality she brought to the tension of K 310.
