This reissue box collects the entire cycle of Mozart keyboard sonatas, plus single-movement works, recorded by Austrian pianist Paul Badura-Skoda on a 1790 Schantz fortepiano that he himself owns. The six CDs included were originally recorded between 1978 and 1990 for a group of related French labels; the budget-price reissue on Naïve is a bit atypical for that label, which has specialized in innovative and lavishly designed full-priced releases. Online retail presentations may not make clear that they are fortepiano recordings, recordings made on a keyboard instrument probably very much like one Mozart would have played himself.

Salieri's own autograph work-list contains the following entry: 'Two concertos for the pianoforte, written for two ladies." Unfortunately we do not know who these two ladies were. All that we can say for certain is that they must both have been technically accomplished and trained to the highest musical standards. Salieri's demanding concertos are distinguished in the main by their middle movements, traditionally the genre's most fertile field of experimentation.

This may well be the most fantastic recording I’ve ever heard of Mozart’s two piano quartets, and coming from someone who prefers his Mozart on modern instruments and has railed regularly against period instruments in music of this vintage, this is beyond high praise; it borders on glorification. Both the Quatuor Festetics, which began as a Read more Sturm und Drang of the G-Minor Quartet’s resolute and deeply tragic first movement. The instrument, of course, postdates though not by much the year in which the piece was written.