Classical Music Album: Mozart Violin Sonatas

Beautiful, eloquent, and sensitive playing is the hallmark of this delectable disc. During lockdown in 2020, the music of Mozart was the company that Dego craved and cherished, and the idea of this disc came about. She was finally reunited with her long-term duo partner, Francesca Leonardi in 2021 after a year apart and built this disc around KV 454. The duo having been playing together for seventeen years and on this disc Leonardi plays a Fazioli Concert Grand Piano.

Opening with Mozart’s B-flat major Sonata, the interaction between violin and piano demonstrates an equilibrium that makes these sonatas charming. The lightness of articulation from pianist and violinist as they meander throughout this first movement is flawless. The playing conveying Mozartian joy, sparkles with expression.

With its opening notes in the G Major KV 301 Mozart makes an immediate statement launching a new style: for the first time, the theme is played by the violin and accompanied by the piano. Once again, this duo is in synchronisation each phrase exquisitely crafted.

Michael O’Loghlin in his interesting notes writes about Sonata KV303 in C major: the beauty if sonata form is that it provides a structure which is at once balanced and satisfying, but also allows the composer great freedom within which to work. In this sonata Mozart was quite flexible in his interpretation. Dego and Leonardi’s reading is elegant.

The disc ends with yet another stylish performance of the Sonata in A major K305. Dego writes she first encountered this sparkling sonata at the age of 11 and she treats us to a rhythmic and expressive performance, one that like the other three sonatas, is totally enthralling.

There is a joie-de-vivre in Dego and Leonardi’s impeccable playing.