The début recording of Leopold Koželuch’s 50 Solo Keyboard Sonatas: portfolio of recorded performances and exegesis.

Abstract

This submission for the PhD degree at the Elder Conservatorium of Music, University of Adelaide, made in two volumes in the form of a portfolio of recorded performances supported by an explanatory exegesis, presents the first complete set of recordings of all fifty solo keyboard sonatas by Leopold Koželuch. While a great deal of scholarly research and recorded performance has been devoted to the keyboard music of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert, and these composers have deservedly come to represent the pinnacle of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century Viennese keyboard tradition, many of their contemporaries have suffered unjustifiable neglect. One such Kleinmeister is the Bohemian Leopold Koželuch. In the latter part of the eighteenth-century Koželuch was a celebrated composer throughout Europe and an esteemed member of the Viennese musical elite, often ranked above Mozart and considered the first fortepianist of the imperial city. Yet, until 2011, only a small number of his 50 surviving solo keyboard sonatas had been available in modern editions. This dearth of editions had resulted in a paucity of recordings; prior to the present study only a handful of the sonatas had been commercially available. However, in 2011 a whole new world began to open up for the Koželuch scholar-performer, with the gradual publication (by Bärenreiter) of Christopher Hogwood’s new complete edition of the Koželuch keyboard sonatas. The purpose of this research has been to take the next logical step from Christopher Hogwood’s impeccable scholarship and make the first complete recording of Koželuch’s 50 solo keyboard sonatas. These performances have been based on prepublication copies of the new edition and the completion of this recording project has come before the publication of the final volume of the Hogwood edition. This comprehensive corpus of recordings makes a major contribution to Koželuch scholarship and to the understanding of his works in relation to the repertoire of late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century keyboard music. The Koželuch scholar (and a wider audience) will now be able to follow the development of the classical sonata in Koželuch’s hands over a period of nearly four decades (1773 -1810). It will also be possible to enter into the multilayered sound-world of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century fortepiano. Original and reproduction instruments have been used throughout the recording process with each instrument chosen to match the appropriate stylistic phase.