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TORONTO, ONTARIO – Robert Silverman (call him “Bob”) just doesn’t let up.
Currently, he is performing the entire Beethoven piano sonatas
at both the Jazz Cellar in Vancouver as part of the “Music on
Main” series, as well as Le Petit Trianon Theatre in San Jose,
where he will also re-record all of
the Beethoven sonatas. This marks Bob as one of very few
pianists to achieve this feat. This project will take Bob
through the spring of 2011.
Now, he has just released a box set of all of Mozart’s 18
piano sonatas, entitled “Complete Mozart Sonatas”, plus the
Fantasie K. 475.
Why did Robert Silverman take on this long-term recording
venture? Bob’s relationship with Mozart is complex. He
had kept a few sonatas in his repertoire for his recital dates
in New York, London, Toronto, and Montreal. He always felt they
were brilliant small masterpieces, more so than they received
credit for. It was a project he felt more able to take on, once
he performed and recorded all the Beethoven sonatas.
To approach the Mozart project, Bob explains, “I am
convinced that a major reconfiguring
of technique is in order, for any traditionally trained player
wishing to seriously explore the Mozart sonatas, post-Beethoven.
The late 19th century ‘competitive’ pianism favoured
by today's young keyboard athletes is contrary to what is
required for this music: expressiveness, touch, inflection, and
dynamics, even the basic hand position, require special thought
and study. I only had time to do this properly after I'd fully
retired from my teaching duties.”
Silverman decided not to take a generic approach to all the
works, but to allow each sonata's personality to come through.
“In order to perceive Mozart as he must have appeared to his
contemporaries, you have to forget all music written since, from
Beethoven onward. Each sonata has its own story to tell. They
were not all intended to ‘go down
easy,’” he explains.
Bob also likes to reconcile the traditional approach with the
modern. He isn’t one to just “play what the master left us”; he
varies repeated melodies and introduces brief cadenzas where
appropriate, as musicians of Mozart’s era did in typical concert
performance.
The order of the sonatas took its cue from the Star Wars films:
at the suggestion of Ray Kimber, director of IsoMike, he said,
“like the films, do the central sonatas first, follow up with
the last four which are non-canonical, as a sequel; then finish
with the first six as a prequel.”
In other news this
season, Robert Silverman will visit McGill University’s
Schulich School of Music for several intensive teaching
sessions, and he will give a solo recital January 11, plus two
lecture-recitals. Editing continues on a new recording for
Stereophile, featuring Brahms’ Handel Variations and Schumann’s
Symphonic Etudes.
Active on Facebook, Silverman enjoys an enormous following on
the internet, where a generous selection of his recordings is
accessible on YouTube and iLike.
Engineered and mastered by Graemme Brown, “Complete Mozart
Sonatas” consists of seven discs on the IsoMike label. The
catalogue number is IsoMike 5602 and is available at
http://www.isomike.com/silverman_mozart.html and Amazon at
www.amazon.com.
Please visit
www.robert-silverman.com for more information.
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Robert Silverman Records
the Mozart Piano Sonatas
