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My father’s record collection was not that extensive, but somehow he managed to acquire recordings of certain works that have stood the test of time and stand out as unique and sometimes definitive performances. I think to this day there is nothing to match the London Symphony Orchestra’s ffrr performance of Stravinksy’s Firebird Suite under Stokowski (this disc the fourth and final time he recorded it), and Glenn Gould’s 4^th and 5^th Beethoven Concerti with Stokowski have an originality and freshness that invigorate still.

And then there was harpsichordist Wanda Landowska’s recording of Mozart Sonatas on the modern piano. I recently managed to acquire a CD with the same cover as my Dad’s old record, and her playing is just as wonderful as I remember it.

These performances are a revelation. Growing up with them I didn’t know how great they were, because I had never heard anything else. But their lightness and variety of touch and colour, their combination of strong rhythmic integrity and freedom, their emotional sensuality and originality of nuance, their freedom in rubato and ornament, all point not only to piano playing from another era, but to harpsichord touch as a fundamental technical and aesthetic source for classical piano.

(By the way, you can purchase this recording, which has the Sonatas in D K311, E flat K333, G K281 and E flat K282 plus the Rondo in A minor K511 and Landowska’s own arrangement of the Country Dances K606, at

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000J10DT8/ref=cm_cr_mts_prod_img )

Landowska was well-trained as a pianist; her Chopin was said to be exquisite although no recordings exist. She then re-discovered the harpsichord and virtually single-handedly returned it to the 20^th century concert stage. But much later she returned to the Steinway piano to record several Mozart sonatas. She brings the sensibilities of a harpsichordist back to the piano, and the result is a fascinating lightness of touch that allows a wonderfully differentiated sound – each nuance of articulation leads to a new phrase colour. Mozart speaks in all his operatic eloquence, instead of the generic ‘niceness’ we too often hear. And her rhythm is wonderfully flexible and simultaneously virile – no mannerism here, but a marvellous capacity to shape phrase through rhythmic manipulation that again grows out of harpsichord technique, where dynamic shaping was not possible.

Landowska herself comments,

“It has been said that my touch is a perpetual staccato. This is a fundamental misunderstanding. The great precision re­quired to strike the keys at the harpsichord is sometimes mis­construed for staccato touch. This error also stems from the elasticity of my bouncy touch, with its precise and neat out­lines. I use perfect legato, however, as harpsichord touch requires. This is a condition sine qua non. Even when staccato is required for certain effects, the basis of harpsichord touch remains the legato.”

The harpsichordist, lacking the standard ‘expressive’ pianistic tools of the sustain pedal and gradual crescendo-decrescendo, developed a whole other set of strategies to articulate musical structure and expression. Landowska is saying, “Why not reinstate these in the pianist’s expressive arsenal?” Her playing proves the point, leaving an impression of tremendous intelligence and ebullience, an effervescent creativity that captivates, intoxicates and convinces the listener with its sheer joie de vivre.

These soundfiles contain excerpts from the D major Sonata K 311, and the Sonata in E flat major K.333. As a special treat we offer the entire 3^rd movement Rondo from K.333, because of Landowska’s wonderful ornamentation practice and then her even more revelatory cadenzas. Who ever heard of adding cadenzas to a piano sonata! But it is perfectly in line with the freedom that performers had in Mozart’s day. And what charming magic she weaves in these written out improvisations!

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Excerpt #1, K.311 1st movement

In K311, 1^st movement, the orchestral flourish of the opening chord and fanfare are rich and robust. Note the added note ornament in the arpeggiated chord. The melodic query that follows is clear, precisely articulated and well-shaped. She clearly intends a solo voice serving as a foil to the full tutti of the beginning. Landowska’s combination of articulated portato or staccato with a light but fully linked legato sound both reflect the fine levels of touch distinction the harpsichordist needs. And Landowska doesn’t try to avoid the percussive element of piano sound but utilizes it to her advantage, giving specific points along her melodic contours definition without ever actually cutting the melodic line.

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Excerpt #2, K.311 2nd movement

The excerpt from K311’s 2^nd movement begins at m. 9, where the solo voice has its first extended rhetorical utterance. Listen at m. 17 (0:25) for the ecstatic, sublime feeling as Landowska’s spins out Mozart’s melody over a finely pedalled yet never blurred accompaniment. At times rhapsodic, at times sweetly, delicately intimate, this solo love song has an at times quite extravagant rubato that, because it grows out of a harpsichord tradition, always avoids destroying classical proportions. The way Landowska shapes each phrase doesn’t just make it beautiful but plumbs the depths of its emotional expression. Again, her combined use of rubato and articulation to achieve this comes from harpsichord tradition where the gradual dynamic shading of a melody was not possible.

But Landowska doesn’t avoid the melodic shaping that a pianoforte could do but a harpsichord couldn’t: she simply adds it to the already impressive array of strategies - articulation, rubato, and terraced dynamics - she learned as a harpsichordist.

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Excerpt #3, K.311 3rd movement

The elegant rhythmic stability and verve of the 3^rd movement Rondo arise from Landowska’s strong sense of pulse - yet another aspect of her harpsichord experience - that gives a robust lilt and dancing quality to this movement in 6/8 time. Landowska never feels rushed even thought the 16ths glitter and shimmer in their speed. Note how the accompanying Alberti bass passages are always present but never intrude. They make a real contribution to the sense of energy and forward movement yet never disturb the primary role of the melody - this is real orchestration!

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Excerpt #4, K.333 1st movement

Many will rebel at the conservative tempo Landowska takes for the opening Allegro of K 333, but this allows her a much more creative interpretation. Then there are many harpsichord touches that add a unique charm to her playing, such as holding down the note B flat at m. 8 (0:16). Note as well the ‘mini-cadenza’ fillings-in of slow notes at mm. 43-44 (1:32), then again at m. 48 (1:40). It is well-documented that this kind of improvisation was a standard part of performance in Mozart’s day, but has now sadly fallen out of practice. Isn’t this approach to Mozart infinitely more alive than the sterile, museum piece, ‘faithfulness to the score’ (in the most shallow meaning of the idea) attitude that makes one pedantic performance virtually identical to another?

How about the orchestration effects: for instance, at m. 36 (1:13) the left hand enters forte to point out the entry of the new voice, but then in the next measure it dissolves again into a smooth background line. She’s playing with the stresses and releases inherent in the musical structure, but not formulaically - she’ll finish one cadence with a strong rhythmic conclusiveness, then have another dissolve away into the subsequent material.

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Excerpt #5, K.333 2nd movement

In the 2^nd movement, her orchestration, her bringing out of the subsidiary voices, her rubato, her singing line, all combine to create an interpretation replete with personality: occasionally stodgy (the ornament at m. 6 (0:25) for instance), often sublime, as in mm. 8-10 (0:34), but always the essence of good taste, as in her added grace notes at m. 7 (0:30). Landowska creates a mini-opera scene compete with characters and pit orchestra, with music dripping in emotion and colour - everything Mozart would have wanted.

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Example #6, K.333 entire 3rd movement

Our final treat is the entire 3^rd movement of K. 333. Landowska plays the Rondo theme with such delicacy and humour, with all her trademark attributes of rhythmic poise and panache, lightness of articulation, boldness of orchestral conception, and then follows each statement of the theme with developmental material full of fantasy and variety of tone and expression. But the piece de resistance is the double set of cadenzas with which the movement concludes (4:38; 6:08). These are a tour de force of style, elegance and ingenuity that delight not only because of their unexpected appearance in a sonata movement!

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If you’d like a copy of these cadenzas, published by Broude Brothers, try ordering them at

http://www.sheetmusicplus.com/store/smp_detail.html?item=47597&cart=34098382732365475&cm_re=289.1.4-_-Results+Item-_-Title

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Finally, Virgil Thomson had this to say about Landowska’s piano playing in the 1950’s…

“Landowska likes to play Mozart in evocation of the way Mozart himself must have, or might have, played on the early fortepiano. To this end she employs, as Mozart certainly employed, a high-fingered technique similar to that which gives the best result in harpsichord playing. She never plays louder than forte, not because she wishes to keep Mozart’s music small but because she wishes to keep it musical. The modern pianoforte gives another kind of sound, in many cases an ugly one, when played with arm weight. In any case, the extension of piano writing into the domain of modern power pianism, an extension that began only with Beethoven, seems inappropriate to her, as it does to many modern musicians.

‘And so, limiting her dynamic range to approximately what was available to Mozart on the Stein fortepiano, she plays his solo sonatas for the musical contrasts that they unquestionably possess rather than for those for which they were never planned. As to rhythm, tempo, phrasing and ornamentation- all the rendering of their basic musical content- her performance is matchless. She makes them large and alive and vivid, just as she does the harpsichord works of Couperin and Scarlatti and Rameau and Bach. Her conceptions and interpretations are a lesson to any musician. Pianistically, all the same, her execution is a little unsatisfactory.

‘It is not unsatisfactory because of any technical inefficiency. It is unsatisfactory because the modern pianoforte, a less brilliant instrument than Mozart’s, does not yield what brilliance it has save by the exploitation of its full dynamic range. And Mozart’s piano music, as we know, was of brilliance and virtuosity all compact. It need not glitter, but it has to shine. Landowska gives us a photograph of it on the modern piano, very much as other pianists give us a photograph of Bach’s harpsichord music.

‘Our instrument is closer to Mozart’s than it is to the plucked instruments. But it is not the same instrument. That is why Mozart’s symphonies and operas and chamber music always sound more vivid to us in execution than his piano music does. Fiddles, wind instruments and voices do not have to walk through Mozart on tiptoes. The pianoforte, no matter how elegant its phrasing, inevitably sounds clumsy and a little meticulous.

‘I recommend Landowska’s pianoforte Mozart, because I recommend any music she touches. It is the best piano Mozart I know. It is a model of understanding musically, as it is a tour de force technically. Nevertheless, by the very fact of being a translation - which her harpsichord playing of course, is not - it is a slightly less authentic, less vigorous reconstitution.”

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Article researched and written by Alan Fraser for PianoTechnique.net