Search - Paul Badura-Skoda :: Mozart: Works for Piano

The second part of the latest Mozart trilogy by the pianist and honorary doctor Paul Badura-Skoda on the period fortepiano by Anton Walter (1790) is entirely characterized by tragedy. Apparently separated from the pinnacle of his outward success in Vienna (around 1784), the Sonata in C minor KV 457, composed the same year, heralds a new era in Mozart's life, the inner and outer tragedy that led to him finally dying in squalor. The sequence of tragic minor works by Mozart during his years in Vienna, which concluded with the unfinished Requiem of 1791, also includes the Fantasias in C minor KV 475 and D minor KV 397 as well as the subdued and moving Adagio in B minor: lamenting, menacing, but also, in the manner typical of Mozart, glorifying and reconciliatory notes - laughing amongst tears. His last Piano Sonata in D major, by contrast, links cheerful elegance to polyphonic structural depth and outshines the previous gloom like a satyr play.

Paul Badura-Skoda: First place in the Austrian Music Competition in 1947 meant the beginning of his career. His teacher was Edwin Fischer. Since 1949, he has performed with major conductors such as Wilhelm Furtwängler and Herbert von Karajan. Major tours as a soloist followed: Australia in 1952, USA - Canada in 1952/53, Latin America from Mexico to Argentina in 1953, and in 1956 he conducted a chamber orchestra of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra on a tour of Italy. Further highlights in his career were his first tour of Japan, where he appeared in Tokyo alone 14 times, and the first, highly successful tour through the Soviet Union in 1964, which was followed by many other tours. In 1979, Paul Badura-Skoda was the first Western pianist to perform in China after the Cultural Revolution. In the Mozart jubilee year 1991, he played the cycle of all Mozart's sonatas in Paris, Vienna, Munich, Madrid, Tokyo, Hong Kong etc. On the occasion of his 80th birthday, he could be heard in all the parts of the world. The focus of his extensive repertoire (he has made more than 200 recordings) is on works by Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert. Paul Badura-Skoda holds honorary doctorates from the Academy of Music and Performing Art in Mannheim (2006), the Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru (2010) and the Akademii Muzycznej w Krakowie - Academy of Music in Cracow (2013).