Sonatina Mozartiana

Sonatina Mozartiana is a solo piano work composed in 2002, in which Gilberto Mendes pays a playful yet sophisticated tribute to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Despite the modesty implied by the title Sonatina, the piece is in fact substantial, spanning around 15 minutes across 10 pages. Mendes himself described it as a “brilliant and free rewriting of Mozart’s Sonata in C major,” likely referring to the famous K.545 — Mozart’s so-called “easy” sonata. In this sense, Sonatina Mozartiana can be understood as a work of transcreation: Mendes takes Mozart’s sonata as a starting point and reimagines it in his own idiom — much like Stravinsky reinterpreted Pergolesi in Pulcinella, or Busoni reworked Bach in his transformative transcriptions. The choice of Mozart reflects Mendes’s admiration for Viennese classicism, though this reverence is refracted through the lens of avant-garde technique and postmodern irony.

The Sonatina Mozartiana broadly follows the structure of the Mozart model, but with deliberate distortions. The original three-movement layout (fast–slow–fast) appears to be preserved. In the opening C major movement, the familiar Mozartian theme emerges recognisably — at least initially — before Mendes veers off-course: tonal coherence is disrupted by sudden modulations, added dissonances, and rhythmic displacement. Mozart’s clean arpeggios and scales are “contaminated” with chromatic inflections, producing a tone that is at once humorous and uncanny.

Mendes also plays with texture: the right hand may retain a Mozartian melody, while the left hand introduces harmonies that are foreign — modern, bitonal or polytonal — creating striking juxtapositions. The central slow movement, presumably based on the Andante from K.545, is adorned with floating chords and unresolved tensions, heightening its expressive potential. The final movement, a reworking of Mozart’s Rondó allegretto, is delivered with uninhibited brilliance: saturated with octaves, dazzling figuration, and rhythmic drive, it pushes classical mechanism into near-manic excess.

Playfulness pervades the work. Mendes toys with listener expectations: delaying cadences, deforming familiar phrases, and slipping in musical “Easter eggs” — perhaps a bar from Ah! vous dirai-je, Maman or another fragment from Mozart’s oeuvre. At moments, the formal stability of the sonata itself seems to collapse under the pressure of atonality or collage. Yet, beneath all this, a trace of Mozart’s original framework remains — a guiding subtext that allows a kind of double listening: one hears both the Mozartian source and Mendes’s mischievous reinvention.

Premiered in Brazil shortly after its composition, Sonatina Mozartiana intrigued and amused audiences. Critics noted its brilliant eccentricity — both in pianistic demands and in the ingenuity of its rewriting. Some compared Mendes to Mauricio Kagel or Luciano Berio, who likewise engaged in ironic dialogue with music history. Others saw the piece as a genuine declaration of love for Mozartian clarity — albeit filtered through postmodern deconstruction.

Technically, the work is demanding (Mendes classified it as “advanced”), and it requires a refined stylistic intelligence: the performer must navigate humour without lapsing into caricature. The piece was notably performed in Europe by Belgian pianist Mireille Gleizes during a conference on musical rewriting, where its blend of reverence and irreverence was warmly received. Although it has not yet appeared on a major commercial recording, concert performances have circulated, fuelling growing interest in this remarkable work — a piece which, as one critic wrote, “makes Mozart and the avant-garde smile at each other across the centuries.”