Mozart, W A - Complete Piano Sonatas - Pires, Maria Joao

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The Portuguese pianist Maria João Pires has long been associated with the music of Mozart. Her delicacy of touch, vibrancy of phrasing and sense of fantasy mark her out as one of the elect who can touch his keyboard music without coarsening or simplifying it. She has made two complete cycles of the sonatas; reissued here is the first one, from the days in the 1970s when she first appeared on the international scene and won over listeners with a graceful purity of approach that left more famous names trailing in her wake. The later cycle brought added refinement, but anyone who is captivated by this still undervalued corpus -- too difficult for beginners, yet scorned by many professionals in search of gaudier glories -- will want to hear this set.

OTHER INFORMATION:
- 'Pires has always been something of a Mozart specialist, and her playing is tasteful and cleanly articulated, the lyrical melodies sensitively shaped, the passage work fluent and even. Nothing she does is ever harsh or graceless.' (Gramophone, July 1990)