The Paul Badura-Skoda/Mozart partnership on disc harkens back to the mono LP days. It most visibly resurfaced in the early 1990s when the pianist recorded Mozart’s complete piano sonatas on the fortepiano for Astrée, a cycle now reissued at mid-price. For the first five sonatas included on the present volume, Badura-Skoda employs a fortepiano manufactured by Johann Schantz of Vienna circa 1790. Intimate, close-miked sonics underline the instrument’s tangy, harpsichordish sonority. They also energize Badura-Skoda’s sforzandos to lively ends (notably in the F major’s first movement and G major’s finale), while at the same time magnifying the pianist’s occasional uneven figurations, inelegant ornaments, and choppy accents.
I compared the performances to Badura-Skoda’s 1979-81 counterparts on a modern concert grand (issued on Eurodisc, and now out of print). In each case the earlier traversals boast greater fluency, grace, emotional contrast, and rhythmic poise. So do Ronald Brautigam’s more recent pianoforte Mozart sonata recordings on BIS, the period-instrument Mozart sonata cycle to have. Brautigam’s phrasing, for instance, conveys a stronger sense of the slow movements’ operatic nature, whereas Badura-Skoda’s inflections and accents sometimes impede the music’s melodic flow. There’s no questioning Badura-Skoda’s forthright musicianship and authority, but he’s recorded these five sonatas more convincingly elsewhere.
