Recording Review #8: Mismatched Mozart

Mozart: Piano Sonatas K. 310, 331, and K. 457; Fantasia in C Minor, K. 475. Yundi Li, piano. Warner Classics 5419798130. 

Did we really need another recording of these well-trodden works? Shrug. Did we need another merely decent recording of them? Debatable. Did we need a merely decent recording of them packaged under the somewhat pretentious title of "Yundi Mozart: The Sonata Project Salzburg"? No, I don't think we did. But that's what we have here. On the surface, this is a glitzy product. Under the hood there are some issues of sound and interpretation that defy the release's lofty packaging. 

The basic problem is this: Yundi is a distinguished performer of Romantic and 20th-century repertoire, but he's less at home in the Classical Period. Mostly he just has the wrong tone. The C Minor Sonata (K. 457) is a good example. This is a bit too heavily pedaled, and the loud notes and large gestures simply BOOM too much. During the quieter portions, and especially the slow movements of K. 310 and 331, the sound is too silky and 19th-century-ish. These portions remind me a bit of Chopin Nocturnes. Even where he manages more restraint, such as the K. 331 variations movement and famous Turkish March, the sound isn't quite right. It's too wooden, with a certain light grace largely missing. To his credit, I could tell he at times that was trying for this feeling, but it pretty much eluded him. 

The K. 475 Fantasy receives the best performance, mostly because a certain whimsy is built into it and matches Yundi's Romantic sensibility better. Accordingly, I was more convinced by the slow sections here. But then Yundi can't help busting through the guardrails during the Allegro portions. His noisy take on them might be at home in Schumann, but it doesn't feel very idiomatic in a Mozart passage at all. 

For my money, the best Mozart interpretations manage to convey emotion within a framework of proper classical restraint. They apply articulation consistently, and embrace clarity and delicate sparkle. It would appear that such a pianism is foreign to Yundi's outlook. Listen to the present recording, and then compare it to performances by Maria João Pires and Mitsuko Uchida, for instance. You'll see what I mean. Not that Yundi does a "bad" job; his rendering is quite serviceable. But with so many great alternatives available, I can't tell someone looking for a single recording of these pieces to go out and buy this "project."

Recommended to Collectors