A touch of Chopin's melancholy
Review: The piano works of Franz Xaver Mozart point to the early Romantic period. Karsten Nottelmann has reissued them in two volumes published by Henle-Verlag.
Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart (1791-1844) was a remarkable pianist and composer. Trained by Johann Nepomuk Hummel and Antonio Salieri, among others, he left his native city of Vienna in 1808 for Galicia, where he settled in Lemberg (now Lviv in the Ukraine). Always celebrated as "W. A. Mozart's son", he also explored his father's legacy in composition. His Don Giovanni Variations of interest, in which the 14-year-old composer adds a lot of empty keyboard ringing to the minuet from the opera, but rather the cadenzas and ornaments that he wrote for some of his father's piano concertos. Some of the harmonies and pianistic writing here are already very much influenced by early Romanticism.
Musically, F. X. Mozart is at his most convincing (no wonder?) when he does not borrow from his father's music and is inspired by the folklore of his Galician surroundings, for example. This is what happened in the Polonaises mélancholiques op. 17 and 22, with a touch of Chopin's elegance and melancholy...
All these works and many more (including two "Diabelli Variations") have now been published by G. Henle-Verlag in two beautifully designed and very handy volumes.
Franz Xaver Mozart: Complete piano works, Urtext edited by Karsten Nottelman, fingering by Rolf Koenen; Volume 1, HN 958; Volume 2, HN 959; € 22.00 each, G. Henle, Munich 2011/12
