Kristian Bezuidenhout

Kristian Bezuidenhout – Mozart: Keyboard Music Vol.4 (2012)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:11:26 minutes | 1,25 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

On volume four of his widely acclaimed traversal of Mozart’s music for solo keyboard, fortepianist Kristian Bezuidenhout performs on an instrument by Paul McNulty, modeled on a Viennese original by Anton Walter & Sohn (c.1805). The program includes Piano Sonatas in D major K.311 and G major K.283 and the lovely Variations on ‘Je suis Lindor’ in E flat Major, K.354. As with the other volumes in this exceptional series, Bezuidenhout brings out colors and shadings in these works that are only possible when performed on a fortepiano.

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Kristian Bezuidenhout – Mozart: Keyboard Music Vol. 3 (2012)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:09:02 minutes | 1,13 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

In Volume 3 of his widely acclaimed traversal of Mozart’s music for solo keyboard, fortepianist Kristian Bezuidenhout plays a modern reproduction of an 1805 Viennese instrument by Anton Walter. The programme includes the well-loved Sonata in F major K. 332, alongside Mozart’s very last composition for piano, the Variations K. 613. Kristian Bezuidenhout was born in South Africa in 1979. He began his studies in Australia, completed them at the Eastman School of Music in the USA and now lives in London. He is a frequent guest artist with the Freiburger Barockorchester, the Orchestre des Champs-Élysées, the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century, Les Arts Florissants, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, The English Concert, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and Collegium Vocale Gent, in many instances assuming the role of guest director.

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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – Keyboard Music, Vols. 8 & 9 – Kristian Bezuidenhout (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 02:33:26 minutes | 2,66 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Master, Official Digital Download – Source: eClassical | Digital Booklet | © Harmonia Mundi
Recorded: January 2013 (K.545), May 2013 (K.179) and December 2014 at Air Studios, Lyndhurst Hall, London

Kristian Bezuidenhout’s cycle of Mozart’s complete keyboard music concludes with this double album, which contains some real rarities that are ideally suited to Bezuidenhout’s tough, wiry style. As such, it may not be the item to pick if you want to sample the series, but it’s often fascinating. Bezuidenhout’s basic modus operandi is to give considerable weight even to works conventionally thought of as light, using his powerful fortepiano (a copy of an 1805 Walter instrument by builder Paul McNulty) and its unequal-temperament tuning to bring out dissonances and sinewy lines rarely heard elsewhere. Here he has some really radical experiments to work with, and even if you find Bezuidenhout’s readings idiosyncratic at times, you’ll likely appreciate the likes of the Modulating Prelude F-C, K. deest (it is indubitably by Mozart), or the Menuetto in D major, K. 355, with its daring harmonies barely matched elsewhere in Mozart’s output. Several of the sonata-form movements were abandoned by Mozart for one reason or another and have been completed by Mozart scholar Robert Levin; the joints are hard to hear. Some pieces, such as the Modulating Prelude and the Four Preludes, K. 284a, are examples of Mozart’s improvisational abilities, which were rarely captured in notation. In the larger and more usual works, Bezuidenhout applies a heavy touch to the Piano Sonatas K. 279 and 280, and to three large variations sets, which are generally given a touch of French elegance. But in the Nine Variations on a Minuet by Duport, K. 573, Bezuidenhout achieves utterly distinctive results in a work that has almost no harmonic content and is completely about register and space. Bezuidenhout’s Mozart is, to be sure, a matter of taste, but this is a fine conclusion to his series. –AllMusic Review by James Manheim

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