Orli Shaham

Orli Shaham – Mozart: Piano Sonatas, Vol. 5 & 6 (K.309, K.311, K.330, K.457, K.533/494) (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:58:03 minutes | 2,11 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Canary Classics

Orli Shaham comes to the end of her monumental survey of Mozart’s complete Piano Sonatas. With this achievement, the pianist puts a double bar line on an exhilarating journey through music she has known most of her life. Shaham’s affinity for Mozart is evident in each sonata, to which she applies tonal beauty, technical fluency, textural lucidity, and interpretive flair. Revered as a thrillingly expressive interpreter of Mozart’s works, Orli Shaham brings technical virtuosity and deftness to performances that connect directly with the audience.

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Orli Shaham – Mozart: Piano Sonatas, Vol. 4 (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:10:03 minutes | 1,27 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Canary Classics

Orli Shaham continues her survey of Mozart’s complete Piano Sonatas in this, the fourth of a six-volume set. 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”. Of the project as a whole, Orli Shaham says: “It has been eye-opening to look at the totality of [Mozart’s] output across these sonatas. Of course, I knew them and had heard them so many times. But I had only ever thought about them in isolation, one sonata at a time, or about the small groups of three or four works written in close succession. 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.” 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.

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Orli Shaham – Mozart: Piano Sonatas, Vol. 2 & Vol. 3 (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 02:10:41 minutes | 2,33 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Canary Classics

This is the second installment in Orli Shaham’s complete Mozart sonatas cycle and follows her recording of the Mozart Violin Sonatas with brother, violinist Gil Shaham, and her acclaimed release of Mozart Piano Concertos, conducted by David Robertson and the St. Louis Symphony. Mozart’s singing line and it’s translation to the piano has served as Orli Shaham’s constant guide in her interpretations of Mozart. 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 with ornamentation, adding or subtracting trills and grace notes with successive takes. Recording in her favorite recording venue, Mechanics Hall, she fully explores the pathos and cultivates the humor in Mozart’s B-flat sonatas. In her own words, “he had such insight into what it means to be human and had to get that out in his music. Mozart was superhuman in what he was able to do… but that never comes across in music that is so human. Mozart’s three B-flat sonatas are so varied and different in their inventive brilliance. Each has a truly individual and distinct voice, yet together they stand on a timeline that clearly maps Mozart’s development from his late teens to full maturity.”
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Orli Shaham – Mozart: Piano Sonata No. 13 in B-Flat Major, K. 333 (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 27:38 minutes | 502 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Canary Classics

Mozart’s singing line and its translation to the piano has served as Orli Shaham’s constant guide in her interpretations of Mozart. While analysis form, harmony, rhythm and phrasing have played an important part Orli Shaham is adamant that the vocal nature of each sonata is paramount. K.333 starts out as would Mozart’s operas, as a single melodic idea as Orli Shaham says, “Mozart taught the keyboard to sing”.

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Orli Shaham – Mozart: Piano Sonata No. 3 in B-Flat Major, K.281 (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 18:45 minutes | 339 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Canary Classics

Mozart’s singing line and its translation to the piano has served as Orli Shaham’s constant guide in her interpretations of Mozart. While analysis of, harmony, rhythm, and phrasing have played an important part, Orli Shaham is adamant that the vocal nature of each sonata is paramount. K.333 starts out as would Mozart’s operas, as a single melodic idea as Orli Shaham says, “Mozart taught the keyboard to sing”. The B-flat sonatas stand individually as emblems of Mozart’s inventive brilliance, three distinct universes, albeit all formed from the same raw materials. 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.

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