Description
0:01 Allegro
10:31 Tempo di minuetto
Recorded on 5th July 2025 in Müllheim, Martinskirche.
This new instrumentation of Mozart’s famous violin sonata for double bass and piano is based on a lovely idea and early drafts by my talented former student, Timothée Methou (the same musician who arranged Brahms’s Rhapsody in G minor). The goal was to allow the double bass to play as much as possible in its natural low register—without compromising the character of the composition.
To achieve this, certain melodies and inner voices were exchanged between the instruments, especially in the first movement. Preserving all of the original musical lines while making full use of the double bass’s distinctive sound required some practical redistribution: at times the double bass now plays what was originally the piano’s lowest voice, while the piano sometimes takes over what was originally the violin’s accompaniment.
Apart from such instrument-specific adjustments, nothing in Mozart’s original score has been altered. Thus, although this is a new and different version of the piece, the PDF edition remains in every other respect a faithful Urtext-style presentation.
And so my old dream continues: to play at least one composition by every great composer. Interpreting an important melodic line from one of Mozart’s chamber works was, for me, a profoundly moving musical experience — something I had long wished for but had never encountered before. I have always dreamed of this moment and now it finally came true. With this in mind, I tried together with Maria Sofianska more than usual to remain faithful to the performance practices of Mozart’s time.
It will be fascinating to see whether this instrumentation will spark wider interest among double bass players. My former professor, Jiří Hudec, after hearing the piece for the very first time in 2024, immediately considered it an ideal audition piece — a refreshing alternative to Dittersdorf or Vanhal (concertos that are indeed played often today, yet are not truly original works for the modern double bass). He felt this way because the musical quality is so exceptionally high, because the register in which the double bass plays lies much closer to its orchestral role, and finally because Mozart’s music embodies the very essence of classical style — a style that demands particularly refined musicianship and, at the same time, an especially delicate and controlled bow technique. I agree with his opinion.
Please write in the comments what do you think about all this.
PDF music is released already some weeks ago in the online shop on my website, with bass parts for GDAE tuning -like I performed it- and also for AEBE (low E is here necessary)
Cheers, dear friends in music,
Božo Paradžik