| 2 CD |
€ 19.95
|
Preorder |
| Label Evil Penguin |
UPC 0608917726626 |
Catalogue number EPRC 0079 |
Release date 03 October 2025 |
In 1775 Leopold Mozart made an offer to publisher Breitkopf in Leipzig: to print an opus of keyboard sonatas by his son mit veränderten Reprisen, following the famous example set by C. P. E. Bach. Breitkopf declined, but after 250 years the idea still resonates: what might Wolfgang Amadé Mozart’s Sonatas with Varied Reprises have sounded like?
Played on a highly responsive Stein fortepiano, Tom Beghin’s reconstituted score of K. 279–284 (Munich, 1775) provides a captivating answer—one that challenges our familiarity with six classics of the repertoire, while also paying tribute to Mozart’s supreme improvisational skills.
Tom Beghin combines a career as performer with that of researcher and teacher. His published work spans different media, from commercially released CDs and films to academic essays and books. His work on Beethoven's 1803 Erard piano resulted in the book Beethoven's French Piano: A Tale of Ambition and Frustration (Chicago, 2022, winner of the American Musical Instrument Society's 2024 Nicholas Bessaraboff Prize) and a double CD (Evil Penguin Records, 2020, winner of the 2020 Caecilia Prize from the Belgian Music Press). The year 2017 saw the birth of Inside the Hearing Machine, an amalgam of publications on Beethoven's late piano sonatas and deafness. His monograph The Virtual Haydn: Paradox of a Twenty-First-Century Keyboardist (Chicago, 2015) followed his recording of the complete solo Haydn keyboard works (Naxos 2009/2011, nominated for a Juno Award by The Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences). He also co-edited Haydn and the Performance of Rhetoric (Chicago, 2007, winner of the 2009 American Musicological Society's Ruth Solie Award).
Alumnus of the HIP-doctoral program at Cornell University, Tom Beghin served on the faculties of the University of California, Los Angeles, and the Schulich School of Music, of McGill University (Montreal). Since 2015, Prof. Beghin has been Senior Researcher and Principal Investigator at the Orpheus Institute for Advanced Studies & Research in Music, in Ghent, Belgium, and since 2024 holds a professorship again at KU Leuven. His research cluster, Declassifying the Classics, focuses on the intersections of technology, rhetoric, and performance.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, whose actual name is Joannes Chrysotomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart, was a composer, pianist, violinist and conductor from the classical period, born in Salzburg. Mozart was a child prodigy. Already competent on keyboard and violin, he composed from the age of five and performed before European royalty. Along with Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven, Mozart is considered to be one of the most influential composers of all of music's history. Within the classical tradition, he was able to develop new musical concepts which left an everlasting impression on all the composers that came after him. Together with Joseph Haydn and Ludwig van Beethoven he is part of the First Viennese School. At 17, Mozart was engaged as a musician at the Salzburg court, but grew restless and traveled in search of a better position. From 1763 he traveled with his family through all of Europe for three years and from 1769 he traveled to Italy and France with his father Leopold after which he took residence in Paris. On July 3rd, 1778, his mother passed away and after a short stay in Munich with the Weber family, his father urged him to return to Salzburg, where he was once again hired by the Bishop. While visiting Vienna in 1781, he was dismissed from his Salzburg position. He chose to stay in the capital, where he achieved fame but little financial security. During his final years in Vienna, he composed many of his best-known symphonies, concertos, and operas, and portions of the Requiem, which was largely unfinished at the time of his death.
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