Interpreting Mozart

At age 78, Paul Badura-Skoda is considered to be one of the great pianists of his generation, as well as an important scholar who has created definitive editions of many of the works of the Viennese masters, most notably Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. With his wife, the noted musicologist Eva Badura-Skoda, he wrote the highly influential Interpreting Mozart on the Keyboard , first published in German in 1957, then in English and Japanese in 1962 and 1963, respectively. Long out of print, this important work has never been updated to reflect the last half-century of scholarship on Mozart's music. Now, the husband-and-wife team have tackled this project, producing an entirely new text that will serve students and scholars of keyboard literature and of the great composer. The book begins by addressing the problems associated with performing Mozart's piano music on "modern" instruments. It then moves through each element of performance-from dynamics to tempo and rhythm, articulation, ornamentation, embellishments, and cadenzas. Badura-Skoda is particularly well-known for his personal approach to performing these works, and his notes on how he both tries to rigorously recreate the composer's intentions while still inserting his own personality into each performance will be of great interest to students of the piano repertory. The book then addresses problems of "text" (scholarship on Mozart's scores), technical questions related to the piano itself, and how to play "continuo" (accompaniments that are indicated only by skeletal notation in the original scores). Finally, in an entirely new section, the pianist discusses four key works by Mozart, showing how the analysis of the book can be applied to practical examples. Interpreting Mozart on the Keyboard takes a classic work and brings it freshly up to date. It will stand as the definitive statement from a master pianist [Publisher description]

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.