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Interpreting Mozart: The Performance of His Piano Pieces And Other Compositions, Second Edition

by Eva & Paul Badura-Skoda
Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, New York, 2008
496 pp. Trade, $110.00
ISBN: 978-0-415-97750-0.

Reviewed by Katharina Blassnigg
University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna

kblassnigg@gmail.com

Eva Badura-Skoda is a noted musicologist who published extensively on the history of the piano and on performance-practice questions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Paul Badura-Skoda is a world famous pianist and scholar, specialising in period and current pianos. In various collaborations they have produced significant musical scholarship through publications that are important treatises concerning the interpretation of Mozart, Haydn, Bach, Schubert, and others. They have published editions of works of Mozart, Beethoven, and Bach and edited, for example, one of the volumes of Mozart's piano concertos for the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe .

Under the original title Mozart Interpretationen the first edition has been published in 1957 in German (five years later appeared the English translation). Many lost and missing Mozart autographs and other unknown sources have been discovered and have become available for examination since then and new insights and thoughts have appeared in recent scholarship including the author's. Now, this updated, revised and enlarged second edition reflects these additional findings in the scholarship of Mozart's music of the last half-century. In addition to the illustrated musical scores, this edition also includes a CD with recordings of Paul Badura-Skoda, who demonstrates many of the examples that are described in the book. These recordings help the reader to gain a much profounder and clearer impression of the thoughts and ideas given by the authors.

Interpreting Mozart shows and discusses the elements of performance and the problems that may occur in performing Mozart's works and offers suggestions how to take up this challenge through a historically informed approach. By describing the period instruments of that time - and which ones Mozart preferred and played himself - along with the added recordings of Paul Badura-Skoda, the reader gets a sense of how piano-music may have sounded during Mozart's life-time. Based on profound knowledge of period instruments, the authors discuss the technical possibilities to extract a quality of sound from current instruments that comes close to the sound of the contemporary musical style. Characteristic musical values such as dynamics, tempo and rhythm, articulation, ornaments and embellishments, etc. are discussed in detail, always considering not only the original manuscript but also early editions, the customs of that time, letters and other circumstances, with the attempt to draw a clear picture of the historical context to achieve a preferably 'authentic' result. The authors consider various editions in their discussion of textual authenticity (asking what did the composer write, what is the meaning behind the notation and how should the music be notated in order to be understood today) and give advise on the best presently available editions of Mozart's piano works. Finally, remarks on the interpretation of selected piano works by Mozart are provided, which show how the analysis of the book can be applied to the practical examples.

This impressive volume addresses in particular musicians and performers, not only of the piano but also of other instruments, it gives a clear and profound description of how to interpret Mozart and shows, in a general way, how to achieve an interpretation as faithful as possible to the composer's original intentions and the style of her/his time. The sophisticated musical attitude of the authors aims for the faithful attempt to recreate the composer's intentions and a passionate search for the essential quality of musical interpretation. For them this means to study as fully as possible the text and the customs of the contemporary context; however, the authors also alert to some caution in this regard, which is discussed in the introduction of the book. They emphasise that all the detailed theoretical studies are a necessary preparation to come to a distinguished interpretation, but, in their view, a musician should pay attention not to give too much importance to the intellectual interpretation in order to avoid blocking "the paths of the unconscious" (p.4), since ultimately, so Paul and Eva Badura-Skoda, art can only be grasped intuitively:

"The ultimate goal of all musical activity is to make an impression on the soul of the listener. That is the goal, but the way to it is a long and uncertain one" (p.1).

In this citation the authors alert us to an ambition that can be read as a guideline for the reader as to how to read the detailed and sophisticated analysis of musical performance in the context of its historical and textual awareness and consideration throughout this volume.

The sophisticated and elaborate studies in Interpreting Mozart are very timely in regard to new historical research methods, and along with the historically-informed performances by Paul Badura-Skoda make a distinguished volume that will give a lot of insight, information and practical advise to any music practitioner and theorist who loves and appreciates Mozart's music, as clearly the authors do.