Mozart, Sonata for two pianos

The first sonatas for piano four hands or for two pianos composed by Mozart were intended to be performed together by him and his sister Nannerl, five years his elder. With them they toured most of Europe between 1763 and 1766, dazzling with their prodigious virtuosity every prince and noblewoman who had the opportunity to listen to them. The august audience entertained them with kisses and from time to time with a gift, once a watch, another time a gala dress, like this one little Mozart wears in the picture, a gift from the Empress Maria Teresa of Austria.

In 1781 Maria Theresa was no longer in this world and Mozart had long since ceased to be a child prodigy. He was 25 years old, and had also long since stopped "rolling around the world like a beggar," in Maria Theresa's not very restrained words ten years earlier.

And he had settled in Vienna, after his patron, Prince-Archbishop Colloredo, had removed him from his position at the irrelevant court of Salzburg, following a bitter dispute a few months earlier.

In Vienna

Settled in Vienna as a free-lance pianist and composer, he obtains his first "outstanding success" with the opera Idomeneo. He has fallen in love with Konstance and plans to marry. Mozart, hunter and gatherer, gets some pupils and prepares and produces concerts presenting his own works, but his talented sister is no longer there to accompany him. Nannerl leads a simple life in Salzburg, under the care of her father Leopold, and somewhat oblivious to her own art.

Sonata for two pianos in D major, K. 448

Premiered in November 1781, it was composed specially for that occasion and performed in the company of fellow pianist Josephine von Aurnhammer, with whom he had already duetted in the Concerto for two pianos of 1779.

It is written in a gallant style, luminous and brilliant, and consists of the three "classical" movements:

00       Allegro con spirito

08:00 Andante

18:01 Molto allegro

Mozart Effect
The sonata was part of the scientific study aimed at testing the theory of the Mozart Effect, which postulates that classical music increases brain activity more than any other type of music. The research continues.

The rendition is by Russian pianists Anatalia Injushina and Vlatseslav Novikov, in a performance at Helsinki's brand new Temppeliaukio Lutheran Stone Church, opened in 1969.