Mozart am Stein vis-a-vis - Andreas Staier & Christine Schornsheim

 

Release Date: April 10, 2007 Label: Harmonia Mundi Number of discs: 1 Composer: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Performer: Andreas Staier, Christine Schornsheim cd info/ buy

Review:

Although these are zestful, musically satisfying performances of mostly Mozart, I suppose the real news here is the instrument: the so-called Stein Vis-à-vis, built by Johann Andreas Stein in 1777. I’ll admit I never heard of it before. It was a kind of mutant, a three-manual harpsichord at one end and at the other a fortepiano with what our scholarly annotator calls a “moderator” stop. The two keyboardists face each other. Honestly, I don’t know why one wouldn’t just buy two separate instruments. To my perhaps too conservative mind, this sounds like a goofy idea, but in practice, as in the German Dances I am listening to right now, the sound is not usually jarring, especially when the two halves of the instrument are being played together. In some of these dances, which Staier and Schornsheim evidently arranged, the two play a kind of game, trading phrases on harpsichord and fortepiano. When they want particularly a quiet section, it is played on the fortepiano end, and one hears the difference. I hear that difference as a disturbance, the way one would hear an affectation. Still this is a fascinating disc. The duo has a particularly vibrant approach to Mozart, in the two familiar sonatas, which they play four hands at the harpsichord end, and in the less familiar works, including the two strange preludes. I don’t know anything to which I can compare this immensely enjoyable disc. Surely many readers will take pleasure in it as well.

 

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