Mozart Violin Sonatas – Alvini and Gatti

Mozart’s Palatine Sonatas: Period Practice with a Balance Problem

The relationship between violin and keyboard in Mozart’s violin sonatas has always been—let’s be frank—a little awkward. Not musically awkward, but conceptually so. We know these pieces were published as “Sonatas for Harpsichord or Fortepiano with Violin Accompaniment,” a designation that persisted well into Beethoven’s time. Yet Mozart’s actual writing often suggests something more conversational, more equal than that title implies. These six sonatas from 1778, dedicated to Princess-Electress Elisabeth Auguste of the Palatinate, navigate this terrain with particular grace—which makes the engineering choices on this Arcana release all the more frustrating.

Laura Alvini and Enrico Gatti give us period instruments: she plays an Anton Waller fortepiano from 1785, he a Laurentius Storioni violin from 1789. The timbral match is exquisite. Gatti’s tone has that silken quality you get from gut strings—sustained, yes, but with a kind of vulnerable shimmer that modern steel can’t quite replicate. Alvini’s fortepiano produces the drier, more intimate sound we expect from these Viennese instruments, each note blooming and fading quickly, creating a sonic halo rather than the percussive attack of a modern Steinway.

But here’s the problem, and it nags throughout both discs: the engineers have placed Gatti front and center, relegating Alvini to a recessed position that Mozart himself would have found perverse. In the Sonata in E-flat Major, K. 302, where the rondo features some of the most delightful violin-piano dialogue Mozart ever penned, we should hear the fortepiano initiating phrases, teasing out melodic fragments, establishing harmonic territory. Instead, Alvini sounds like she’s playing in the next room while Gatti commands the acoustic space. The ear adjusts—the timbral differences are distinct enough that you can mentally rebalance the soundstage—but why should we have to?

This matters particularly in the Sonata in E Minor, K. 304, the only minor-key work in the set and the one piece here that approaches genuine profundity. Mozart wrote this just after his mother’s death in Paris, and while we shouldn’t make too much of biographical circumstance, there’s an unmistakable darkness in the first movement’s chromatic writing, a restlessness in the harmonic rhythm that sets it apart from its companions. The fortepiano carries much of this expressive weight—those grinding dissonances, those unexpected harmonic deflections need to register with full force. They don’t, quite, because Alvini is fighting the microphone placement.

The Sonata in D Major, K. 306, the only three-movement work here and the most substantial of the set, fares better simply because Mozart gives both instruments more assertive material. This is Mozart flexing his muscles a bit—the opening Allegro has genuine symphonic ambitions, and the final Allegretto variations show him thinking orchestrally. Gatti and Alvini clearly relish the piece’s heft. Their tempo choices in the central Andante cantabile feel exactly right: not too slow (a common trap), allowing the music to breathe without becoming precious.

I’m less convinced by their approach to the Sonata in C Major, K. 303. The first movement’s unexpected tempo shifts—Adagio to Molto allegro and back—need sharper contrasts than we get here. The changes feel smoothed over rather than dramatized. Mozart is being deliberately disruptive, almost experimental, and the interpretation could push harder.

The two sets of variations appended to the sonatas—K. 359 on “La bergère Célimène” and K. 360 on “Hélas, j’ai perdu mon amant“—date from 1781, after Mozart had settled in Vienna. The musical interest is distributed more democratically here, though evidence suggests Mozart conceived them for piano and added the violin part later. Alvini handles the increasingly elaborate keyboard figuration with admirable clarity, never letting virtuosity overwhelm musical sense. In K. 359’s later variations, where Mozart piles on the ornamental complexity, her articulation remains crystalline.

Gatti plays beautifully throughout—that needs saying emphatically. His intonation is impeccable (no mean feat on gut strings), his phrasing elegant, his sense of style secure. He understands these pieces aren’t violin concertos with keyboard reduction; they’re chamber music in which the violin often serves harmonic and rhythmic support. When he does get the melodic line, as in the Sonata in A Major, K. 305, he shapes phrases with a natural, unforced lyricism that never calls attention to itself.

The Arcana presentation is, as usual, exemplary. The booklet offers substantial scholarly apparatus without becoming academic deadweight, and the triptych-like packaging gives the whole enterprise a sense of occasion. The recorded sound—balance issues aside—captures the intimacy of the Villa Medici Giulini venue beautifully. You feel you’re in the room with these musicians.

So where does this leave us? With a release that offers much to admire but ultimately frustrates. The performances themselves are first-rate: stylish, affectionate, technically accomplished. Gatti and Alvini clearly love this music and understand its idiom. But the engineering choices undermine Mozart’s intentions in ways that matter. For a album that takes period practice seriously—authentic instruments, historically informed tempos, careful attention to articulation and ornament—to then violate the composer’s explicit conception of these works as keyboard sonatas with violin accompaniment seems oddly tone-deaf.

If you can mentally adjust the balance, there’s real pleasure to be had here. But in a discography crowded with fine Mozart violin sonata recordings, this one doesn’t quite earn an unqualified recommendation. A near miss.