Listening to Mozart's 'Piano Sonatas' is like going for a walk with Clark Kent.

Cafe Society
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I frequently use the metaphor of a journey to describe what’s happening in Classical music. The theme starts from home, and travels through some different settings before returning home, somewhat changed but essentially the same. Older, but wiser.

And I’ve known Mozart’s music for a long time. The operas, the symphonies, the string quartets, the Requiem.

Well, this last couple of weeks, I’ve been listening to his Piano Sonatas. It is my conviction that he reserved some of his wildest musical thoughts for the Piano Sonatas.

I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to discover them - I’ve known the Haydn and the Beethoven Sonatas for ages, the Bach French and English Suites, the later piano masters like Chopin and Liszt, etc. What can I say? Mozart is an absolute master at implying far more than he says, and he says an awful lot.

Today, listening to the Piano Sonata #5, K. 283, it finally struck me - it’s like I’m going for a walk with Clark Kent. We’re not going anywhere special, just a walk through the neighbourhood, doing a couple of errands and getting a coffee before returning home. Except he suddenly runs to the end of the block and comes back before you’ve really registered that he’s taken off. The neighbour’s psychotic dog that usually tries to attack you runs up to him and rolls over, begs and dances on its hind legs on command. The taxi driver and the bike courier stop their argument to say ‘Hi’ to him. He rescues someone’s cat from the tree. Everybody smiles when they meet him. He sees the bucket of paint spill off the scaffolding up ahead and whips out an umbrella, dashing to hold it over the pretty woman so her beautiful dress doesn’t get ruined and getting yellow paint all over himself in the process. Then, two minutes later, his suit is clean again. And the whole time, it’s as if he’s summarizing Aristotle in elegant haiku. Hours later, you can only recall bits and pieces of the specifics of what he said, but you will carry the impression of a wonderful, well spent afternoon for months…

Doesn’t even begin to convey how astonishing it has been, discovering these pieces. Can’t wait until I’m good enough to be able to play them…

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His piano concertos blow my mind.

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I was getting tired of making four-figure salaries my whole life, as a grad student and as a music teacher and musician, so I applied for a certificate in microelectronics technology at a local community college.

Studying for the placement exams – I only needed to place into college algebra – I’m 35 and although I learned calc I on my own when I was studying Leibniz, and a whole lot of proof theory, set theory, modal logic, model theory as a grad student which was more metamathematics than quantitative things, I haven’t done anything related to solving actual problems with real number solutions since high school, I managed to place out of all the trig, algebra, college algebra by spending a weekend listening to Brendel play the Mozart Piano Concertos. Thanks to Mozart, I don’t have to take any maths at all, and I’m not a genius at all. It took all my brain to prove theorems in set theory and devise alternate proofs to Goedel or Loewenheim-Skolem, and I had my wife helping me out with the proofs when I needed it.

It helped me out. I wouldn’t call the Requiem in B minor a help, though – it’s easy to get distracted by the music. Kyrie Eleison, baby! That was for relaxing after my 14-16 hour days.

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If I were to write sonatas, it would much more like Superman!
Well, not quite the comic book or movie Superman, but the off-kilter jokes told by drunken sots in the wee hours. The ones that end with “…you know Superman, you can be quite a prick sometimes” or “…and then the Invisible Man says, ‘man, my ass hurts’.”

Nah, who am I kidding. They’d sound like Aquaman trying to get a date to take him seriously.

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This sounds bizarre, but some of my favorite Mozart piano sonati are by Glenn Gould. They’re unorthodox, but I’m glad to have the complete series on disc. I’ll go with Brendel with the piano concerti, though, and yes, I still have “problems” of the emotional kind when listening to his Requiem in B minor (b).

Some of the chamber music – the trios and quartets are the most recent ones I’ve listened to – are indescribably strong. I got distracted while studying listening to one of the trios and listening to the left hand scales. You try re-learning basic math while being like “Holy Shit, that rules!” and being compelled to try to replicate it by ear on the piano.

It’s the same feeling I get when listening to Don Patterson play something like “Embraceable You” or “Stairway to the Stars” on the Hammond organ – a keyboard guy like me must at least try to play those scalar runs, just for fun.