Page 96 - FULL BOOK Isata Kanneh-Mason Childhood Tales

Mozart – Sonatas for Piano and Violin Renaud Capuҫon (violin), Kit Armstrong
(piano) (Deutsche Grammophon)
Four CDs...92 tracks...16 Mozart sonatas plus two sets of variations, one set of 12 in G major on
the tune “La Bergère Célimène”, and six in G minor, on “Hélas j’ai perdu mon amant”. This new
set, it seems is just a part of an impressive pipeline of Mozart works from Capuҫon this year.
Also scheduled for more-or-less imminent release are a DVD in the next few weeks, the
concertos in September, followed by the piano quartets in November. Does this approach work?
Possibly...after all, the composer is described tersely on the homepage of publisher Bärenreiter
as "a genius [...] who composed faster than he could write.” So why invent struggle if there isn’t
any? Capuҫon says about his duo partnership with Kit Armstrong: “everything works in a
completely uncomplicated and natural way.”

In the booklet Capuҫon goes further, and admits that he “is surprised that he has performed
these pieces so rarely and in some cases discovered them only recently.” It is quite possible to
work like this: Perlman and Baremboim were happy to take the quick-fix, bravura approach to a
movement like the Rondo of K.378 as recently as 2006, and Capuҫon/ Armstrong have a similar
breezy insouciance. There’s nothing wrong with it... and yet, the moment players start to engage