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Topic: Mozart sonatas: how to play the repetitons differently  (Read 2517 times)

Offline rmbarbosa

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Mozart sonatas: how to play the repetitons differently
on: September 25, 2018, 02:59:17 PM
Hi! I`m asked to perform some Mozart sonatas.
Mozart is known to show carefully how he intend his sonatas must be played. Namely phrasing. But he also put a da capo almost allways. As we shoud not play the repetition in exactly the same way I ask if it will be wrong to  play for example stacato a phrase played ligato in the first time.
I would like to know your opinion. Thank you

Offline anamnesis

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Re: Mozart sonatas: how to play the repetitons differently
Reply #1 on: September 26, 2018, 12:53:13 AM
The attitude behind "play the repetition differently", especially for certain composers like Mozart for example, misses the entire point underlying what repetitions really "do" for larger musical forms.  It 'snot that you won't do something different, but what you do is informed entirely by your sense of the large scope of the work rather than just merely doing something different to maintain interest.

Very, very roughly you can start developing the instincts of what to "do" by abstracting the entire section upon the first play-through as a "downbeat" and then repeated as an "upbeat" that transitions and flows into the next section that continues on.  (Obviously, adapt this overall concept to the particular situation at hand of when this repetition occurs within the form.)  

People warn about the "tyranny of the bar line", but there's a larger version of that same basic error when it comes to long form and repetitions. You really have to a vision of the whole piece and how entire sections can almost have the same type of behavior people typically see at more local levels like measures/phrases.  

Oswald Jonas quotes a letter supposedly by (though possibly apocryphal) by Mozart:  

"And the thing becomes really almost finished in my mind, even if it is long, so that thenceforth I can see it at a glance, as if I were looking at a beautiful picture or a comely person; and I can hear it in my imagination, not in temporal succession, as will always be necessary in performance, but as if all at once."

Offline bronnestam

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Re: Mozart sonatas: how to play the repetitons differently
Reply #2 on: September 26, 2018, 08:07:40 AM
I think that in the days of Mozart, Beethoven et. al. it was expected by the performer to add some personal touch to the pieces. The audience and the composer would be disappointed if the performer played exactly from the sheet without making the slightest attempt of improvising. (With the exception of the debut performance, perhaps.) And today I wonder why pianists try so much to sound just like some kind of ideal version - the one on the paper. If they all succeeded, everyone would sound exactly the same and then I don't think there is a point in live performances anymore. Why not play a CD instead then?

And actually today's musicians, of contemporary music, are expected to make their own versions when they play covers. A cover which sounds EXACTLY as the original work is seldom appreciated, everyone wonders what is the point in making this.
So go ahead and make your own Mozart cover, one that you personally like, and don't worry about what others think.

Offline rmbarbosa

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Re: Mozart sonatas: how to play the repetitons differently
Reply #3 on: October 01, 2018, 08:50:37 AM
Thank you
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