Mozart Piano Sonata in A Minor K310: Transcribed for Cello
When we look through a catalogue of Mozart’s famous Piano Sonatas this is the only one that is in a minor key !
FIRST MOVEMENT
What an extraordinary movement this is ! The suffering, torment, rage, anguish and grief that are expressed from the very first bars have more in common with music of the Romantic Period than with the lightness, restraint, charm and delight so associated with Mozart’s Classical Period. The dissonance of the second and fourth bars, for example, would even seem to have more in common with 20th-century note clusters than with any concept of traditional harmony. In what would normally be a dominant 7th chord on E (with E, G#,B and D), Mozart has added an A, which creates a dissonance that is like a knife thrust to the heart.
The reason for this astonishing outpouring of grief becomes immediately clear when we discover that this sonata was written in the days immediately following the death of Mozart’s mother in 1778.