Mozart's Piano Music

Concise and authoritative, this penetrating and lucid guide looks at every important aspect of Mozart's works for piano, including the sonatas, concertos, duets, two-piano works, and variations. It examines their historical background and their aesthetic content, discusses aspects of performance, and provides detailed analyses of selected works.

Mozart''s emergence as a mature artist coincides with the rise to prominence of the piano, an instrument that came alive under his fingers and served as medium for many of his finest compositions. In Mozart''s Piano Music, William Kinderman reconsiders common assumptions about Mozart''s life and art while offering comprehensive and incisive commentary on the solo music and concertos. After placing Mozart''s pianistic legacy in its larger biographical and cultural context, Kinderman addresses the lively gestural and structural aspects of Mozart''s musical language and explores the nature of his creative process. Incorporating the most recent research throughout this encompassing study, Kinderman expertly surveys each of the major genres of the keyboard music, including the four-hand and two-piano works. Beyond examining issues such as Mozart''s earliest childhood compositions, his musical rhetoric and expression, the social context of his Viennese concertos, and affinities between his piano works and operas, Kinderman''s main emphasis falls on detailed discussion of selected individual compositions.