Product Description

Aleck Karis has done some wonderful recordings of 20th-century music. I wish he were as bold with Mozart as with the music of his own time. There is one outstandingly imaginative performance here: the Adagio, K. 617a, which Karis plays softly throughout, evoking the original sound of the glass harmonica for which the music was written. The rest of the performances, alas, are also pretty soft throughout, lacking the shaping and contrasts that would give the music life. This very long CD reduces Mozart to background music. Pianists like Uchida and Kraus give us restrained Mozart that still has plenty of musical impulse.