Mozart K545 - Sonata in C Major - Allegro

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Hey there, and welcome to the first video on my channel! It’s been almost two years since I’ve seriously played the piano, but now I’m back to it, I guess. And what better way to get my feet wet again than with Mozart K545, the classic?

I chose this piece to start off with because I feel like a fair bit has happened to me this past summer, and this piece almost conveys a sense of care-free happiness. Sure it’s punctuated by moments of strife and anger, but it’s never overwhelming and it’s never a full-on rage. It’s just a happy life. And that’s how I felt like my summer started.

I remember hearing this piece a lot growing up when I went to recitals for my teacher’s studio. It’s almost like the first real piece a kid learns to play, where it’s not just a page long or consists of a super basic melody and a bit of harmony in the left hand, but there’s a bit of technique required like scales and some voicing. However, despite hearing it a lot, I myself never got the chance to learn it.

I actually haven’t played a whole lot of Mozart in my career. The last piece I played I think was a four-hand with my younger brother, and that was maybe 8 years ago. But even so, there’s just a certain charm to Mozart that I’ve always enjoyed. Certainly, I (like many others) find scores from the Baroque or Classical era harder to interpret because the technique required is a whole lot of pure fingering, and for me, it can feel emotionally lackluster in comparison to a work by Chopin or Brahms. This was certainly the case with a lot of the Bach that I played. I think that’s largely due to a lack of experience (I mean after playing several of Bach’s Preludes and Fugues and even a suite I still don’t think I can interpret at all haha), but even so, there’s a certain charm to Mozart that I’ve always found interesting.

Whenever I listened to it or looked at the score for K545, I’ve always been enamored by the way that it’s so simple (like I’ve messed around on the piano before and played like the first parts by ear), yet so elegant and clean. But because of that, small mistakes in performance stand out in sharp contrast even more so than with a more technically demanding piece where they can be hidden by manipulating the pedal. It’s like what my violin teacher told me: beginners love Mozart because he’s simple, but pros hate Mozart because he’s hard to get perfect. Well, maybe not hate, but find him very challenging.

That was certainly what I found when I started recording this piece. First, since I haven’t performed in years, even the slight pressure of recording and having to sit down and find the tempo before starting was enough to throw me and get my heart racing. Second, when I listened back to the recording, I found that my tempo fluctuated a lot and my technique was nowhere near as light and crispy as I wanted it to be. So it was back to the drawing board for another two weeks (because I also got new mics and had to wait for them to get in!) and a whole lot of practice on the metronome.

Now getting into the performance: the touch throughout this whole piece is super light. With this came the challenge of properly pressing each key to the base while still being able to maintain movement and, well, lightness. It was a bit of a challenge starting off, because, as I’ve said, it’s been a hot sec since I’ve had to lift each finger so deliberately in order to play each note. But when played this way, each note just seems to sparkle.

Overall, a pretty decent performance by me despite a few spots (if I do say so myself), but aside from that, it was just a whole lot of fun getting back into playing and performing, even if it’s on a virtual platform.

I hope you enjoyed my breakdown of Mozart’s Sonata in C - Allegro and the thoughts that went into it for me! Big shout out to my friend Suzanne who is helping me get back up to speed with playing and who’s balling out on teaching in general as well!

Until next time!

- WattKeys

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