Search - Mozart, Ts'Ong :: Fou Ts'Ong Plays Mozart

Utterly origional Mozart.

06/26/1999

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Now 65,this pianist from Shanghai is one of the outstanding Mozart stylists of our time.Listening to thoese recordings one is struck by the utter originality of his approach.The playing belongs to no school and borrows from no tradition.Fou Ts'ong studied in Warsaw with the great musicoligist Jan Ekier. The guiding principle was to take each mark on the score as an imperative to performance.If you look at the most heavily marked movements in Mozart,such as the B minor Adagio played here,on the page sudden and almost violent changes of dynamic are called for.Perhaps no one takes them seriously for the danger in doing so is to sound jerkey and unmusical.It takes a musician who has lived this music all his life and who idertifies with the feeling that the markings represent to bring the full spiratuality of this music to life.Here he is.We get a packed CD of some of the greatest music written for the piano.There is a huge and orchestral Fantasy-Sonata in C minor and a driven F major sonata.The balance is late Mozart.What are those chromatic harmonies telling us and why can one best charachterise the A minor rondo as "sadness with a smile"?Nobody knows, but closer to this music you cannot get than this pianist gets."