Mozart: Variations, Piano Sonata K. 331

Internationally acclaimed Federico Colli continues his personal exploration of the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart with this second volume of works for solo piano. Colli opens his program with the “Adagio in B minor,” K. 540, from 1788, toward the end of Mozart’s short life. As the only piece on the album that does not take the form of variations, this Adagio is in sonata form and represents an extremely rare case in Mozart’s output in the chosen key. The two subsequent variation movements (selected from the seventeen Mozart composed) use a similar method of constructing variations on the theme—“Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” in the first, and Gluck’s great hit “Our foolish rabble thinks” in the second. Colli concludes his program with the rather unusual “Sonata in A major,” K. 311. Instead of the expected sonata form, the first movement is a theme with (six) variations. After the second movement (a minuet and trio), Mozart concludes with a rondo—probably one of his most famous pieces, the “Alla turca,” also known as the “Turkish March.”