Friedrich Gulda – Mozart for the People

   in Piano International (Sep, 2016)
For this concert, Gulda performed in front of an audience with a maximum age of 25. It is good, then, that the age limit is broken by the release of these performances: truly Mozart for all people.

This feels like a master’s purest thoughts on another master. The lesser-known K282 begins with an Adagio, exquisitely shaped; the ensuing Menuetto has Gulda finding character aplenty in the simplest of gestures. The sound isn’t perfect, a little brittle, but we hear the brilliant excitement of the finale unalloyed, ornaments superbly natural.

In between sonatas, Gulda takes up the microphone: ‘To end, one of the sonatas in D major, I’ve forgotten the Köchel number…’ …