"Mozart scholars long took it for granted that the three piano sonatas K. 330-332 were written in Paris in the year 1778. However, some twenty years ago, detailed research on the only partly extant autographs made it necessary to revise this dating: both Mozart’s handwriting and the type of paper used point to 1783 as the year of composition. But it is still unclear whether Mozart composed the sonatas in Vienna, where he had been living as a freelance musician since the spring of 1781, or on a trip to Salzburg in the summer and autumn of 1783. The musicologist Alan Tyson, who also undertook the paper research, thought it more likely that they were written during his stay in Salzburg.
"Mozart set out for Salzburg in July 1783, along with his wife Constanze, whom he had married in Vienna on 4 August 1782. Since the wedding had taken place in the absence of both his father and his sister, he was obliged to introduce his wife to his closest relatives at some stage – it is probable that this 'presentation' of Constanze was his main reason for travelling to the city for which he had so little affection. Later commentators have surmised that Mozart’s father and sister gave his wife none too warm a welcome. Yet there can be little truth in this, for during their time there the whole family went to call on acquaintances in Salzburg, and passed the time with excursions, visits to the theatre, and making music together. In the three months or so that he spent in Salzburg, Mozart seems to have composed little, to judge from the fairly solid information we have. It was during this time that he wrote the two Duos for violin and viola K. 423 and K. 424, with which he is supposed to have helped Michael Haydn out of a tight corner. But the 'Mass in C minor, K. 427', specifically intended for performance in Salzburg, remained unfinished. Mozart had already made a start on the composition in the winter of 1782/83, but he wrote only two of the movements that were still lacking while in Salzburg. Perhaps he spent his time there on these three piano sonatas instead. But if he really did compose them in Salzburg, they were apparently not yet finished when he returned to Vienna in November. So much is indicated by the letter he wrote to his father from Vienna on 9 and 12 June 1784 (which incidentally is the only document in the Mozart correspondence in which these sonatas are mentioned): 'Now I have given Artaria for printing the three sonatas for solo keyboard which I once sent my sister, the first in C, the second in A, and the third in F.' If Mozart had already completed the sonatas in Salzburg, he would hardly have had to send them to his sister from Vienna.
"The quotation from this letter also shows that Mozart sent the three works to press together. They were published by the Viennese firm of Artaria in the summer of 1784 as 'Trois Sonates pour le Clavecin ou Pianoforte composèes par W. A. Mozart. Oeuvre. VI.'; the edition was advertised in the 'Wiener Zeitung' of 25 August as a 'novelty'. Mozart certainly conceived the sonatas from the beginning as a homogeneous group of three, that is to say as an 'opus'. Not only did he give the Sonatas K. 330 and K. 332 the respective headings 'Sonate I.' and 'Sonate III.', as can be seen on the extant pages of the autographs, he also coordinated the three works with regard to formal design and characteristics. The tonic keys of the three sonatas stand in a relationship of falling thirds to one another, and each sonata presents a different combination of tempo directions and time signatures in its individual movements. One need go no further than a comparison between the opening movements of the Sonatas K. 330 and K. 332 to realise Mozart’s concern with diversity of artistic resources: whereas K. 330's 'Allegro moderato' in 2/4 begins with a capricious-seeming, diatonic descending phrase, the 3/4 'Allegro' of K.332 starts with a rising melody built on a broken tonic triad, whose cantabile character makes it seem like the second subject of a sonata allegro, rather than the first. The respective themes of the slow movements of these two sonatas offer a similar contrast in design. What is more, the movements' formal layout is quite different: the ternary form of the first sonata's 'Andante cantabile' is answered, in the 'Adagio' of the third, by a sonata form without development. The only thing the two movements have in common is their great wealth of expression.
"At the centre of this trilogy stands K. 331, the most unusual of the sonatas. Not only do its three movements – theme and variations, minuet, rondo finale – represent types that occur in neither of the other two sonatas, but a sonata that opened with a variation movement was at that time something quite new in Vienna. Another special feature is the finale with its flavour of janissary music, the celebrated 'Alla Turca'. Here Mozart takes up once more the Turkish style he had already exploited in his 'Singspiel Die Entführung aus dem Serail, K.384', yet at the same time seems almost to caricature it through stylistic exaggeration. It is interesting to note that, in the first three impressions of the Artaria edition, the Alla Turca bore the unusual tempo marking 'All[e]grino', which was later changed to 'Allegretto'. Without this alteration, not a single tempo indication would have been repeated in the course of the three sonatas' total of nine movements – which was clearly Mozart’s intention.
"With the ingenious layout, sophisticated details and rich substance of his three sonatas K. 330-332, Mozart provided enough to satisfy any connoisseur (Kenner). But above all, he could use this opus 6 as a forceful reminder to the well-off Viennese amateur pianists (Liebhaber), from whom he earned his living as a teacher and performer, that he was also a composer of piano sonatas. Just why these sonatas might be attractive to potential buyers is summed up in a nutshell by an announcement in the 'Staats- und Gelehrten Zeitung des Hamburgischen unpartheyischen Correspondenten' from the year 1785: 'Three splendid sonatas which, if properly played, make an excellent effect.'" (Andreas Friesenhagen, tr. Charles Johnston. From the liner notes.)
Performer: Andreas Staier
1. Piano Sonata In C Major, K. 330: I. Allegro Moderato
2. Piano Sonata In C Major, K. 330: II. Andante Cantabile
3. Piano Sonata In C Major, K. 330: III. Allegretto
4. Piano Sonata In A Major, K. 331 'Alla Turca': I. Andante Grazioso (Thème Et Variations)
5. Piano Sonata In A Major, K. 331 'Alla Turca': II. Menuetto - Trio
6. Piano Sonata In A Major, K. 331 'Alla Turca': III. Alla Turca. Allegretto
7. Piano Sonata In F Major, K. 332: I. Allegro
8. Piano Sonata In F Major, K. 332: II. Adagio
9. Piano Sonata In F Major, K. 332: III. Allegro Assai
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