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Mozart ( posthumous ): Sonata fragment (1859)

1,409 views · Published 10 September 2016 · 4:06 · Indexed 14 November 2026

Channel: PSearPianist · 2016 · Music

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Phillip Sear plays a sonata movement purportedly dictated by the 'spirit of Mozart' to the French medium Bryon d'Orgeval.
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The story of this piece is fascinating.  It was apparently dictated to d'Orgeval (who, I believe, was a bass singer at the Opéra Comique in Paris, and would have had musical training), and was performed by a Chopin pupil side-by-side with a sonata movement composed in Mozart's lifetime to an audience of spiritualists.  They were asked which they preferred, and apparently they thought that this was the superior piece!  The spirit of Mozart apparently agreed that this was the better piece because "The sweetness and charm are more tender and lively in that one".  Actually, I find that the textures of the piece are far more monotonous than a 'real' Mozart sonata movement, and for a really good piece in the style of Mozart, I would commend Bendel's 'Andante Favori': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJ9Rx-NEDNI , which I think Mozart would have really liked.  To learn more about this unusual piece, you can see an extract from an 1859 Spiritist Review: http://bit.ly/2cD4yI1 , and also a link to a Brazilian blog (in Brazilian Portuguese) which includes the score, and a link to an earlier performance of the piece here on YouTube: http://bit.ly/2cD6sZ8 .  I am playing it here, because any piece by Mozart deserves at least one performance! 😉  My thumbnail superimposes a detail from the famous posthumous portrait of Mozart by Barbara Kraft (1819), and his supposed death mask.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------- Played by Phillip Sear
http://www.psear.co.uk (Email:  [email protected]  
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