Progetto Martha Argerich

italiano

Works

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Sonata in C Major, K. 545 (Easy Sonata)

 

In the summer of 1876, Edvard Grieg went to Bayreuth to attend the first complete performance of Richard Wagner’s The Ring of the Nibelungs. Upon returning home, Grieg went straight back to work, urged on by a strong creative impulse that certainly had something to do with the profound impression that the Wagnerian tetralogy had made on him. In Norway, however, he had to carry out many tasks and duties that he had previously agreed to take on and from which he could not withdraw. It was precisely at this time that Grieg composed second piano parts for four piano sonatas by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart; one of these was the famous Sonata in C Major, K. 545 - the so-called “easy sonata”. In his own words, he intended to “give some of Mozart’s sonatas a more seductive effect for our contemporary ears”. Grieg’s intervention, which has often been very severely criticised, is really to be considered a musical re-creation, free in its treatment of Mozart’s original; in effect, it may be considered an original composition.

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1. Allegro
2. Andante
3. Rondò. Allegretto

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Performance