Pianist Alon Goldstein is joined by American chamber music ensemble the Fine Arts Quartet and special guest Rachel Calin on double bass for the world premiere recordings of these chamber versions of two of Mozart’s greatest and most popular piano concertos. To make the two works more accessible to the public, 19th century composer Ignaz Lachner left the piano parts untouched and wrote splendid string quartet transcriptions of the orchestra parts with added bass. These arrangements sound almost as natural as if Mozart had transcribed them himself.

Domenico Scarlatti is best remembered for the hundreds of single-movement keyboard sonatas he composed for his pupil the Infanta Maria Bárbara, who married the heir to the Spanish throne in 1728, taking her music master with her from Lisbon to Madrid. Scarlattis panache and inventiveness is always on show in these compact sonatas, their delicacy and refinement hiding some surprising explorations of unexpected keys, and technical demands such as hand-crossing and chains of sixths and thirds that would have posed some interesting challenges to his clearly talented pupil.