Mozart the Travelling Whirlwind: the fourth of pianist Michael Wessel's exploration of Mozart's piano sonatas

Mozart the Travelling Whirlwind - Mozart: Sonatas Nos. 7, 8, 9;  Michael Wessel; ARS Produktion
Reviewed by Rey Andreas 27 March 2026

German pianist Michael Wessel recorded a new album of Mozart’s piano sonatas for the ARS label in 2025. Titled Mozart The Travelling Whirlwind, the album features Sonatas Nos. 7, 8, and 9 (K 309, 311, and 310, respectively), as well as a Siciliana and sonata movements (Sonatensätze in German). 

While his first sonata is marked as much by pianistic virtuosity as by an almost exuberant joy, some of its eighth notes—particularly in its final movement, Rondeau, Allegretto grazioso—suggest a more anxious and desperate mood. Could this exaggerated joy, intense in its expression, be nothing more than a headlong rush?

This gap between the greatest joy and the deepest sorrow, this tension between these two opposing emotions—which constantly narrows without ever closing—reaches its peak in Sonata No. 9, composed in Paris. It would undoubtedly be too easy to attribute this sonata to the death of his mother, which occurred shortly before its composition. Perhaps this death merely provided an opportunity for this anxiety within Mozart to reveal itself more openly….

In any case, the pianist succeeds here in interpreting these works as the little sisters of Mozart’s most tragic operas—obviously the three operas with Da Ponte, but also, earlier, Mitridate and Lucio Silla.
The quality of this recording lies in the interplay—one might even say the interplay—between lightness and gravity, which prevents the former from becoming frivolous and the latter from becoming too sombre.

All of Mozart is right there…

Wolfgang Amadeus MOZART (1756-1791)
Piano Sonata number 7 in C major KV 309 (Mannheim 1777) 
Piano Sonata number 8 in D major KV 311 (Mannheim 1777/78) 
Piano Sonata number 9 in A minor KV 310 (Paris 1778) 
Taken from the notebook of the 8 years old Mozart:
     Sonata movement in G major, KV 15p 
    Siciliana in D major KV 15u
Sonata movement in B-flat major KV 400 / 372a (1781)
Michael Wessel (piano)

ARS Produktion ARS 38 378 1CD [74:53]

Michael Wessel is professor of piano, song interpretation and methodology at the University of Church Music in Bayreuth. He studied piano, composition, music theory and school music at the music universities of Detmold and Stuttgart, and his teachers included Elisabeth Leonskaja and the composer Helmut Lachenmann. In the years leading up to his death, Wessel often sought artistic advice from the Paul Badura-Skoda, who wrote: "Michael Wessel is not only an excellent, sensitive pianist, but also one of the most intelligent musicians I have ever met."

This disc is the fourth of Michael Wessel's Mozart discs for ARS, each with a particular theme. Previous discs being Mozart The Poet, Mozart the Double-Faced and Mozart the Progressive