Mozart for Four Hands

Mozart/Grieg Sonata in C Major, K. 545
Mozart/Busoni Fantasia in F Minor for Musical Clock, K. 608
[Mozart: The Complete Piano Works for Four Hands]

Misha Dichter & Cipa Dichter (piano)

Nimbus NI 2537/9

It is good to have Busoni's and Grieg's Mozart transcriptions available. The little Mozart sonata that everyone plays is piquant in this elaboration, and Busoni makes the piece for Musical Clock properly grand.

But I am not enthusiastic enough to recommend this 3 CD set of the complete works. I think they're all for four-hands at one keyboard, but that is not stated in terms. To my taste, the Dichters are too straight-laced, metronomically safe, but responding to the music with little flexibility or moulding of the phrases. And, even more important, whereas Grieg and Busoni were writing for (nearly) modern pianos, Mozart wasn't and these works, many of them intended for domestic use, sound anachronistic.

Others will differ, and the recordings were well received on MusicMasters in 2005, so it seems, though I've not located any reviews of that original release.

Peter Grahame Woolf