The second part of the latest Mozart trilogy by the pianist and honorary doctor Paul Badura-Skoda on the period fortepiano by Anton Walter (1790) is entirely characterized by tragedy.

Apparently separated from the pinnacle of his outward success in Vienna (around 1784), the Sonata in C minor KV 457, composed the same year, heralds a new era in Mozart’s life, the inner and outer tragedy that led to him finally dying in squalor.

The sequence of tragic minor works by Mozart during his years in Vienna, which concluded with the unfinished Requiem of 1791, also includes the Fantasias in C minor KV 475 and D minor KV 397 as well as the subdued and moving Adagio in B minor: lamenting, menacing, but also, in the manner typical of Mozart, glorifying and reconciliatory notes – laughing amongst tears.

His last Piano Sonata in D major, by contrast, links cheerful elegance to polyphonic structural depth and outshines the previous gloom like a satyr play.