With Mozart's piano concertos and piano and violin sonatas behind him—the latter not, regrettably, available in this country—Malcolm Bilson now turns to the piano sonatas. This new issue avoids the usual chronological organization and couples three of the 1775 Munich sonatas with one of the Mannheim-Paris group of 1777-8 and two dating, probably, from 1783. Bilson, keenly responsive to the different idioms, tends to accentuate the stylistic contrast. Among the three early sonatas, he gives a particularly happy account of K283, the popular G major work, bringing a firm rhythm to its opening movement, a pleasant gentle lyricism to the andante and crisp articulation to the finale, K281 goes well, too, its first movement detail very precisely handled, a good deal of gentle poetic feeling in the andante amoroso and many touches of wit in the timing of the finale. I find K280 a little less appealing, and sometimes (as in the first movement) curiously abrupt in delivery.
Bilson is perhaps surprisingly generous over rubato, and I was not always happy over this in the Mannheim Sonata, K311, where the impetuousness and the numerous little Luftpausen seem to me less to mark out the structure or changes of mood than to damage the momentum and the broad continuity of the music—the wide dynamic range he uses here has rather the same effect. The appealing andante, however, is done with some intensity, a pensive, inward performance that I find quite compelling. And the finale goes with a fine rhythm. In the first movement, too, he is fairly free with the rhythm, and he certainly takes Mozart's adagio marking for the middle movement pretty seriously, possibly allowing the piece a little more weight than it can readily bear.
Of the two later sonatas, I found K330 particularly enjoyable. The music of its opening movement responds especially well to the fortepiano's refinement of tone and its capacity for telling detail. The slow movement is happily eloquent, its elaborate lines finely sculpted to highly expressive effect. Bilson permits himself, every now and then in this set, some ornamentation, especially in the repeats, it is tasteful, idiomatic and telling—perhaps the more so by being sparingly applied. This movement is one that benefits from it. The finale is carried off with plenty of spirit.
Lastly, the most familiar of the sonatas, K331 in A. The variation theme of the first movement is done very simply and the variations are happily alert: sensitive timing makes the A minor one gently eloquent, the adagio is duly expressive (again, a little elaboration in the repeats), and the only one I didn't really enjoy was the handcrossing variation, where the piano sounds quite harsh—possibly a more legato approach would have served better. There is a finely exuberant account of the alla turca finale, though I have to add that I found the contrasts in volume in the rapid music a little arbitrary (the dynamic markings are not Mozart's and to my mind unconvincing) and there is a good deal of tempo variation too.
As always with Malcolm Bilson, the articulation is clear and faithful, and the interpretation as a whole shows a sharp, discriminating musical mind. It is always easy to see just why he draws out a particular phrase, hastens another, pauses momentarily before a third. That doesn't, necessarily, guarantee that one sympathizes with the musical effect, and occasionally (notably in K311) I don't. Sometimes I wish for a little less deliberation and a little more spontaneity. Bilson uses a modern copy, by Philip Belt, of an instrument by Anton Walter, modelled on the one Mozart used and is now in the Geburtshaus in Salzburg. This produces a much finer and sweeter tone than the instrument, anonymous but said to be Viennese used by Temenushka Vesselinova in her recent Accent/Harmonia Mundi version of the first six sonatas, her playing, enthusiastic and not unmusical, seems to lack something in control but anyway is seriously marred by the coarse, rather jangly sound. The recording of the new set is much better but it does have a slightly harsh quality as if recorded too close; in persons and on his Archiv recordings, Bilson produces a sweeter sound than this.'