Italian flutist
Raffaele Trevisani is on shaky ground in transcribing these sonatas for violin and keyboard (or, in the conception of
Mozart's day, piano and violin) for flute and piano. It is true that transcriptions of all kinds were a primary method of diffusing new music in the late eighteenth century, but in the case of the sonata that opens the program here there is direct evidence that
Mozart didn't favor this particular solution -- he wrote "violino o flauto traverso" on the manuscript but then crossed it out. Yet the music is attractive, even though
Trevisani is basically disregarding
Mozart's wishes. Is this due to
Trevisani's musicality? Partly, yes. He's an exceptionally lively player who creates a wonderfully delicate balance with pianist Paola Girardi. All the small details with which
Mozart beefed up his still partly accompanimental violin parts emerge in sparkling dialogue. But it is also the transcriptions themselves that are successful, no matter what
Mozart said. The flute adds an intriguing dimension to passages in which it serves as accompaniment to the piano, often in long pedal points where
Trevisani keeps things moving with a panoply of shifting colors. But the biggest reason the transcriptions work is that the music from this stage in
Mozart's career, within a few years before and after his sojourn in Paris, is suited to the flute.
Mozart wrote some delightful music for the flute while he was in France, even as he complained about it, and more than one writer has suggested that his famous stated dislike for the flute merely represented his more general anti-authoritarian streak taking aim at the nearest convenient target -- French nobles had commissioned flute music from him, so he suddenly conceived a dislike for the instrument. Listen to the artless Andante sostenuto of the Sonata in C major, K. 296 (track 5), and see if you don't think it's at least as ingratiating on the flute as it would be on the violin. Indeed, the slightly later and considerably less French K. 376 and K. 379 sonatas don't work quite as well here; the flute seems to be straining in places to give the music the appropriate weight. Still, many listeners will enjoy this temporary expansion of
Mozart's slender canon of flute music.