Mozart’s last piano sonatas receive first-class treatment under Andreas Haefliger’s supple and musicianly hands. In contrast to the ample-toned, vocally oriented phrasing you hear from Alfred Brendel and Murray Perahia in the great K. 533/494 sonata, Haefliger’s bracing symmetry evokes a lively chamber orchestra. Rather than rattle off the K. 545 sonata’s famous first movement like the hackneyed “children’s” piece it’s often taken for, Haefliger instead brings out the music’s gravity and lyrical dimensions. He pumps up the slow movement’s left-hand Alberti bass patterns and clarifies their melodic outlines in telling relation to the right hand. The finale is lithe and totally liberated from the square accents other pianists often impose.
Haefliger’s graceful, imaginatively nuanced accounts of the B-flat (K. 570) and D major (K. 576) sonatas stand with the catalog’s finest. Perhaps the pianist’s expressive distensions in the D major’s first movement sound a bit coy next to more straightforward renditions (Wurtz, Uchida, and Schiff, for example), but that’s a minor, picky detail. What’s important is that the highly talented Andreas Haefliger is making solo recordings again. A most enjoyable disc.
