The piano sonata was a form in which Mozart’s dramatic genius perhaps did not shine quite so brightly as it did in his operas, piano concertos, and string quartets. For all Mozart’s sonatas’ lightness and grace, the form was apparently less congenial to him than to his older contemporary Haydn and certainly to his successor, Beethoven. 

But there are those works in which Mozart closely approached the dramatic power of his concertos and operas: two of them are on the all-Mozart first-half of Richard Goode’s program today.

Although he wrote the Fantasy–in which he combines funereal C-Minor material with demonic chromaticism–at least six months (and perhaps two years) after the Sonata in the same key, Mozart endorsed the connections between the two works by publishing them together, and they are almost as often played together as they are apart. Goode chooses the latter method, setting-off these two stormy tragic works with the much earlier happy and innocent Sonata in B-flat Major, K. 281.

Many pianists and scholars rank the Fantasy as Mozart’s most important work for solo piano. Its dissonant chromaticism and C Minor mood must have fascinated Beethoven. Even the opening–bare unison octaves–seems to convey impending doom, and the subsequent echoes in the instrument’s upper register enhance a sense of man’s helplessness in a confrontation with fate. While it may seem freely constructed–the term “fantasy” itself usually suggests an unusually free, almost formless composition–it is actually tightly knit. Its overall shape is a Adagio–Allegro–Andantino–Piu Allegro succession of slow, fast, slow sections with a return of the opening Adagio at the conclusion. Toward the end of the Andantino, the music attempts to escape, in a brief Piu Allegro, the quiet inevitability that is predicted– one almost wants to say prophesied–by the music’s grim opening, but the Adagio’s return in the closing bars makes any such movement impossible.

When Mozart wrote his Sonata in B-flat Major late in 1774 or early 1775, he had not yet met Haydn, his senior by twenty-four years. But his admiration for the older composer is evident in the first movement: in its structure, thematic material, and linear quality; in its generous proportions; in the piquant contrast between the ceremonious first subject and the lyrical second; the extensive development section; and in the mounting tension that leads to the recapitulation.

The two following movements fully live-up to the first. The slow movement–an Andante amoroso (a description the composer used only rarely)–is among the finest Mozart had written up to that time; it should be played as an intimate devotion, not as a declaration of passion. The final Rondo is in gavotte rhythm. It is packed with high spirits and concerto-like effects—the short cadenza; the trill in the accompaniment beneath the final return of the rondo theme; and the playful close with its high-spirited leaps.

Mozart’s Sonata in C Minor, written in 1784, was his first in the genre after a hiatus of several years. Its shattering expression of personal anguish in what was perceived as a new language sets it apart as the beginning of a new epoch. It is one of the works–along with such pieces as its companion C-Minor Fantasie–that made the deepest impression on Mozart’s direct contemporaries and successors, especially the young Beethoven. Although Mozart was at the peak of his worldly success in Vienna, it is tragic to the core. It’s the first of the composer’s tragic works in minor keys that culminate in the unfinished Requiem of 1791.

Beginning with its assertive opening, the first movement is a sustained cry of protest that yields at its end to a consoling adagio. It is surely no accident that the first movement’s die-away close bears a resemblance to the similar ending of the first movement of Beethoven’s final sonata in the same key and that the A-flat Major second theme in the slow movement Adagio is almost identical to the theme of the Adagio of the later composer’s Pathetique Sonata. The sense of tragedy returns in the final Rondo, in which lamentation, protest, resignation, and despair are constantly interrupted by silences which reinforce the anguish as the finale storms to its tragic close.

Chopin’s sonatas and concertos were once frequent targets of derogation. Throughout the nineteenth century and for much of the twentieth, many critics found it implausible that the “feminine” Chopin could write sonatas that measured up against those of the more “masculine” Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. But the truth is that Chopin was the only composer of his generation who felt comfortable with creating large forms. Each of the ballades and scherzos, as well as the F Minor Fantasy, the F-sharp Minor Polonaise, and the Polonaise-Fantasy, is as long as or longer than an average movement of a Beethoven sonata. Moreover, Chopin’s two mature sonatas may be more satisfying in public performance than any written after the late masterpieces of Beethoven and Schubert, including those of Schumann, Mendelssohn, Liszt, and Brahms.

The Sonata in B Minor, Op. 58, is a concert hall perennial. Long (slightly more than thirty minutes if the first-movement repeat is observed), difficult, and effective, it has attracted virtuoso pianists since 1844. It is an epic work–the first movement opens in media res–not a tragic one like the earlier Sonata No. 2 in B-flat Minor, Op. 35. The first movement’s Allegro maestoso marking must, therefore, be carefully observed. If the temptation to play too quickly is not resisted, the movement breaks-down into a series of passionate episodes, losing the sense of order and unity that comes with a more measured and majestic pace. The second movement must make the listener feel airborne. But the tempo, while seeming to be as fast as possible, must not be so fast that it fails to emphasize the melodic outlines. Otherwise, the audience will feel as if it is speeding down a pothole-filled road at night instead of flying in the morning sky. The third movement, with its Largo marking, is hard to sustain. It is slow, dreamlike, and filled with anticipations of Debussy. In inexperienced hands it falls apart or–worse–sounds like a sodden dirge.

The last movement is Chopin at his most incandescent. The finale immediately announces its intentions with mighty upward octave swoops. The indicated Presto is qualified by a cautionary non tanto. The sweeping right-hand runs up and down the keyboard, over the persistent left hand rhythm, must be fast but not so fast as to prohibit constant amplification of the sound and increase in the weight of expression. Ever more powerful crescendos culminate in one of the most exultant perorations in all piano literature. §