Friedrich Gulda: Mozart For The People

For the Austrian pianist Friedrich Gulda, music was a realm of infinite possibility. His adventures in jazz, crossover and avant-garde performance art prompted some critics to describe him as a "musical terrorist". But for Gulda, one composer above all was sacred: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, whom he described as "the greatest of the greatest" and whose creativity he viewed as a precursor of his own maverick spirit. Gulda's Mozart is still in a class of its own, and this performance of two of Mozart's middle-period sonatas – recorded live in the Amerikahaus, Munich, in 1981 – demonstrates precisely why.