DANIEL BARENBOIM ~ Mozart piano sonata # 9 ; K.311 1989
Daniel Barenboim plays Mozart’s piano sonata # 9 in D major, K.311 with wonderful vigor and delicacy as only he can do. These recordings were made in Germany in 1989 and are part of a full DVD set of all of Mozart’s piano sonatas. The idea of orchestral writing is evident in the K.311 sonata, especially the 3rd movement, because of the contrast in texture and tonal colour.However, it is the 2nd. movement that gives off a distinctly beautiful
sonata movement without a development. Its song-like eleven-bar theme, with a concluding note at the 12th measure, is followed by an episode and a wonderfully varied return of the theme in D major (measure 25) instead of a contrasting second subject. The recapitulation starts in measure 39. One of Mozart’s most memorable piano sonatas.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart‘s Piano Sonata No. 9 in D major, K. 311 (284c) was written on the composer’s stay in Augsburg and Mannheim in November-December 1777, and is contemporaneous with his Sonata K. 309 (Mozart wrote his Sonata K. 310 in the summer of the following year, in Paris). The three sonatas K. 309-311 were published as a set ‘Opus IV’ in about 1782, by Franz Joseph Heina in Paris.
The work has three movements:
A typical performance takes about 15 to 17 minutes.
The first movement is in sonata form. Its first subject has a quasi orchestral opening, and its second subject in the dominant key (A major) is quieter. The development section is almost entirely based on the last four bars of the exposition.
The second movement has an episodic structure A-B-A-B-A-coda. The second theme’s melody is gently decorated with syncopation, accompanied by broken chords in the left hand.
Lastly, the most technically demanding movement of the three is a sonata rondo, with a short central episode in F sharp minor (the main key’s relative minor). A slow cadenza-like passage containing a rapid ascending chromatic scale leads back to the first theme.
The piece displays mature thematic development.
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