5.0 out of 5 stars
Pink on Blackness, October 28, 2011
This review is from: Mozart: 3 Piano Sonatas k. 279, 457, & 576; Fantasia k. 475 C Minor (Audio CD)
The Fantasy K 475 and the Sonata, K 457 are a modern-day Dioscuri. More than mere tonality unites them. In 1990, a safe was opened at the Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary, no less, to reveal the long-lost manuscripts. They frequently appear in concert together.
Here, Uchida fuses them into the one work. The Fantasy, which is a devil to play well, forms a mighty prelude to the Sonata. Uchida's touch is unerring. Both works span an abyss: Uchida bridges them with truth and beauty. But to my mind, the real highlight of this disc is her performance of the first sonata, K 279 in C Major. She imbues the slow movement with "inexhaustible longing" and does so without overstepping its sensibilities. The so-called Trumpet Sonata, K 576, completes the recital. Again, it is masterfully performed. Like the Fantasty, it puts the fear of God into pianists. Uchida plays it with great naturalness and not too much legato. If Energy is Eternal Delight as Blake tells us, there is nothing more beloved of heaven than its kinetic finale.
Oh yes: we have spent and spent and spent and sooner or later we'll have to pay but in wait for that reckoning, purchase this luminous disc - the famous 'Black Label' of the Uchida series.
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