Listening to K. 475

which I have not heard in some time (like 15 years) I keep thinking this is really Beethoven (whose sonatas I have also not heard in 15 years perhaps; from this distance of time they seem to blend into each other seamlessly). Really, K. 475 feels like the Apasionata (only better of course): the same rhetorical tricks, same sort of abrupt, unfriendly melodies, rising disquieting arpeggios in the left hand, the same sort of abrupt ending without a coda.

The work is practically romantic; I can't get it through my head the fantasia predates the utterly classical Sonata Facile. Wow.

And I wonder: what kind of music would Mozart have composed had he lived -- like Haydn, or Strauss -- forever (say, till 1830s or 40s)? There really is a very good chance that he would have invented -- and by-passed -- atonality in his early 50's. And what would he have made of the Prokof 6 - 7 - 8 cycle? I can't resist the idea that he would have liked this stuff.

Really, Mozart sitting in on a Richter's premiere of Prokof's 8th -- what a fantastic idea. I am amazed no one had written this as a radio play.

Better yet, Mozart premiering them himself. A prima vista, of course.

PS

Probably what happened was that Beethoven got hold of 475/457 in Bonn; and finding that it resonated with him in a particular way, ran away with it. His entire piano oeuvre, indeed, perhaps all of his later work, grows out of it. It was all very wonderful, of course, but one does wish he had got hold of, and ran away with, the Sonata Facile, instead.