In contrast to the poised symmetry and scrupulously balanced Mozart playing of pianists such as Walter Gieseking, Marc-André Hamelin, and Christian Blackshaw (to name just a few), Jean Muller is often angular and edgy. He’s not afraid to speed up a phrase following an emphatic accent, or roughen up his focused sonority to underline a passing dissonance. You won’t find, say, Roberto Prosseda’s inventive embellishments or improvisational gestures, but you will notice Muller’s ear-tickling yet musically meaningful changes of emphasis or voicing on repeats, and how he shapes second subjects with subtle yet characterful contrasts to the opening themes.
Moreover, Muller is a master of timing. Take, for example, his precise placement of soft chords in K. 311’s Rondo, or how teeny pauses before the forte left-hand octave upbeats in K. 279’s finale evoke the sound of surprise. Muller rightly feels K. 282’s central Menuetto as one beat to the measure, although little hint of a polonaise comes across in the pianist’s austere deliberation over K. 284’s central movement. However, Muller’s intelligent deployment of coloristic resources (degrees of pedaling, variety of articulation, carefully meted-out trills, and so forth) will surely hold listeners’ attention in this sonata’s long concluding variations movement. Even in a catalogue overrun with world-class Mozart solo piano recordings, Muller’s gifts deserve attention and consideration. I look forward to further volumes.
