There are not many pianists around today as interesting and as musically aware as Andras Schiff, and I was curious to see how he would deal with the particular disciplines imposed by the fortepiano—and not just any old fortepiano, but the one that actually belonged to Mozart. Moving from the modern instrument to the old one involves coping not only with a different touch and articulation but also with a limited dynamic range; it involves establishing and observing the disciplines of a narrower dynamic scale. I feel that Schiff manages this a bit like someone learning to live within a more modest income than he or she is used to: it's hard to avoid the occasional overspending. When you want more sonority on a fortepiano, you can simply play more firmly, in which case the tone coarsens without really getting louder, or you can create the illusion of more weight by spreading the chords slightly. Schiff does both of these from time to time within performances that by and large are very musicianly, very observant and often very original in their view of the music. The finest of them is, I think, that of the C minor Fantasia, the reflective, often darkly inward quality of which he catches admirably; that the passage just before the return of the opening music suffers from unsynchronized chords is a pity but not really damaging. The little Gigue, K574 is very brilliant and alive; and the mechanical organ piece K616 has some neat fingerwork but I don't really see why it was included—this is the wrong instrument for it.
Of the two sonatas, I think K570 comes off slightly better, with some fine playing in the pensive Adagio and many good things in the first movement, though the finale, which he plays very heartily, would perhaps have responded better to a more delicate, carefully timed approach. The finale of K545 I found difficult to take, with these 'pecked' staccatos in its main theme and so little natural flow, while the Andante is curiously cool, almost mechanical; but the famous first movement is happily done. The dynamic management of the melancholy K511 Rondo seems to me misjudged, its contrasts so marked that some of the music seems almost as if parenthesized; no proper norm is established. And the other Rondo, K485, which surely ought to ''flow like oil'' (Mozart's own phrase, though not of this work), is often held back or pressed forward, in fact rhythmically unstable—a piece that ought to be graceful comes out rather awkwardly. The K355 Minuet, too, might have responded better to a less sharply articulated manner; its chromaticisms and dissonances suggest a quite different expressive ambience.
I have perhaps been rather severe on a disc that contains much that is appealing and musically penetrating. But Schiff demands to be judged by the very highest standards. The performances do, to my mind, betray a player who is not really attuned, by long experience, to the type of instrument he is using, and I hope that the Mozart Stiftung will make this fortepiano available for recording by others more committed and more habituated to fortepiano playing (there has in fact been a recording with Robert Levin). But for all these reservations I would not hesitate to advise Mozartians to listen to this disc, both for the instrument itself and for the insights that Schiff has to offer.'