Robert Levin’s lifetime of immersion in the music of Mozart comes to fruition in this release, the complete piano sonatas, recorded on the composer’s own fortepiano. It is the first complete set recorded on the five-octave instrument, built in the early 1780s, likely by Anton Gabriel Walter, the leading instrument maker in Vienna at the time. Levin has substantial performance experience with the instrument, owned by the International Mozarteum Foundation in Salzburg, and clearly knows its potential and limitations intimately.

But he’s not shy about exploiting the potential to its fullest, and pushing the instrument to the limits of its expressive and tonal possibilities. These are robust, hyper-animated, quicksilver performances, full of stark contrasts and sudden changes of mood and temperament. One imagines Mozart’s instrument shaking just a bit on the floor under the force of Levin’s furious left-hand chord figures in the opening of the Sonata in A minor, K310, or in the bravura conclusion of the Rondo alla turca from the Sonata in A major, K331.

Levin’s rich ornamentation has attracted considerable attention. I find it entirely convincing, giving these performances an oratorical, in-the-moment electricity, as the speaker explores his subject with extemporaneous insight, elaboration and emphasis. The repeat of the exposition is a continual delight, though it’s testament to Levin’s intuitive mastery of Mozart’s idiom that the ornamented second take on the material feels seamless and organically connected to the first statement.

Another delight: decrescendos, pianos and pianissimos. Mozart’s instrument is particularly expressive when played at the lower end of the dynamic scale, which fades to a near whisper without losing tonal substance or clarity. The dynamic range, which Levin exploits to full expressive effect, is as capacious as the modern piano, but much of that territory is located on the softer side of mezzo-forte, leaving the sense of a vast, detailed world of sound in miniature.

This release also includes Levin’s own completions of three unfinished sonata movements. He has said his goal was to leave no clue as to where his pen took up and Mozart’s left off, and he has succeeded. The results are seamless, and satisfying.