MOZART. PIANO DUETS. Christoph Eschen- ® bach. Justus Frantz (pno, four hands) DG ® 2740 258 (three records, nas). Items marked * from 2530 529 (5/75), f2530 285 (8/73), 12530 363 (7/74).

Sonatas—C major, K1 9d*: No 2 in B flat major, K358/1 86c: No. 3 in D major, K381/1 23a*; No. 4 in F major, K4971; No. 5 in C major. K521 t: No. 8 in D major, K448/375at. Adagio and Allegro in F minor for a mechanical organ, K594*. Andante and five variations in G major, K501 1. Fantasia in F minor, K608t.

The assertion that this three-disc set contains Mozart's complete music for piano duet needs some qualification. Admittedly, it includes the five completed four-hand sonatas—K t9d in C of 1765, K381/123a in D of 1772, K358/186c in B flat of 1774, K497 in F of 1786, and K521 of 1787—the Andante andjive variations in G, K501 of 1786, the Sonata in D for two pianos, K448/ 375a of 1781 (not a piano duet this in the narrow sense, of course) and two four-hand arrangements, not by Mozart, of two pieces orginally composed for mechanical organ—the Adagio and Allegro in F minor, K594 of 1790 and the Fantasia in F minor, K608 of 1791. It does not, however, include the impressive unfinished four-hand Sonata in G, K357/497a of 1786, of which Julius André made a perfectly satisfactory performing edition in 1853, or the various other more fragmentary four-hand pieces; nor does it include the Fugue in C minor for two pianos, K426 of 1783.

The records are reissued in their original couplings which means that the sequence of works in the album is not chronological: a small point. When the individual discs first came out SP expressed some reservations, with some of which I agree: the very early C major Sonata, written for the harpsichord, inevitably sounds wrong on a modern grand (however well Eschenbach and Frantz play it), and so do the pieces for mechanical organ, impressive though they are as music; and perhaps these performances of the two Salzburg sonatas in D and B flat do smack more of the drawing room than of the concert hail, their abundant allusions to orchestral colouring and effects slightly under-played. But I must say that I was most impressed by the performances of the two magnificent late four-hand sonatas in F and

C, and the bewitching Variations in 0, in which the pianists' occasional slight relaxing of the tempo (as in the finale of K497—surely the greatest piano duet ever written) never seems to me to exceed the bounds of musical discretion; and in the extrovert concerto-like two-piano Sonata in

D, which Mozart wrote for himself and his gifted pupil Josepha, "the fat daughter of Herr von Auernhammer", Eschenbach and Frantz are in fine form,

All things considered, these well-engineered recordings probably offer the most satisfying performances of these works at present available: more committed and less mannered than the slightly more 'complete' Decca recording by Bracha and Eden Tamir (SDD548-50, 11/79), and far more penetrating and idiomatic than the rather superficial (and much less 'complete') Musicaphon recording by Alfons and Aloys Kontarsky (BM30SL3002-3, 7/82). Perhaps, one day, we shall have a recording by two great Mozart players on a Viennese piano of Mozart's day, and then we shall have some idea of how the composer himself wanted this splendid music to sound. R.G.