Orli Shaham - Mozart: The Complete Piano Sonatas (CD)

In this monumental survey of Mozart's complete Piano Sonatas, Orli Shaham is revered as a "thrillingly expressive" interpreter of Mozart's works bringing "technical virtuosity and deftness" to performances that "connect directly with an audience." Shaham is a musical polymath: an internationally renowned concert pianist who performs an astonishingly wide range of repertoire; a deft programer in recitals and as artistic director and host of Pacific Symphony's chamber music series in California; a dedicated teacher on faculty at The Juilliard School; a noted radio broadcaster known for her sharp wit and keen intellect; and founder of Bach Yard, an interactive concert series for young children. Recorded in Ms. Shaham's favorite venue, Mechanics Hall in Worcester, Massachusetts, each volume in this box set comes with extensive program notes that gives the listener immeasurable insight towards the Shaham's artistry, musicality, and interpretation. "When you become open to all eighteen sonatas as one body of work, you discover that the breadth of ideas, types of sounds, and depth of expression they contain are quite mind-boggling," says the pianist. The artistic genius in Mozart is that he leaves the performer to capture the mood in the music, and this Orli Shaham does with aplomb, the studio environment for this recording encouraging her to experiment and "go all out" with ornamentation, adding or subtracting trills and grace notes with successive takes.