Chamber arrangements of orchestral works were common before the advent of radio and recordings. While many of these were cranked out by hacks, some contain much more than utilitarian value, particularly Hummel’s seven Mozart Piano Concerto arrangements for piano, flute, violin, and cello. Hummel gets dazzling textural and registral mileage out of his instruments and often extends Mozart’s solo piano part by way of filled-in chords and octave transpositions. His flashy, harmonically adventurous cadenzas sound like the progeny of Mozart and Chopin. Pianist Fumiko Shiraga and her colleagues achieve a rarefied level of ensemble fine-tuning and color that transcend these scores’ curiosity value.
Listen to how Shiraga consistently adjusts her sound and her articulation, whether matching cellist Tibor Bényi’s elegant bass lines and full-bodied tremolos, or scaling back decorative passagework in order to allow violin or flute melodies their due. I only wish she had inflected her unaccompanied solo parts with similar expressive variety and more harmonic tension: Shiraga tends to get generic when under the spotlight. A few sonic considerations also temper my enthusiasm: the recorded ambience gets boxy in louder moments, and the Fazioli grand’s hollow, slightly glassy sonority is not to my taste. Still, it’s always interesting to hear familiar masterpieces in unfamiliar settings, especially when recast by one of Mozart’s most talented protégés.
