Elisabeth Leonskaja, Sviatoslav Richter - Mozart, Grieg: Piano Sonatas (1996)

In 1877 Edvard Grieg informed his publisher that he had added “a free, second piano to several of Mozart’s sonatas.” As he later emphasised, his modernization “did not change a single one of Mozart’s notes”, but constituted “a way of showing admiration for an old master.” Grieg also intended the pieces for a duo of student at teacher; here the performers are a pianist of exceptional distinction and her legendary mentor: Elisabeth Leonskaja and Sviatoslav Richter.

Now this really is something to tickle the fancy of transcription-fanciers. When Grieg added an accompaniment for a second piano to Mozart’s keyboard sonatas, he did it primarily with teaching in mind. It was apparently common practice in the 1880s for teachers to accompany their pupils on a second piano (my own teacher was still perpetuating the custom 80 years on). But the resulting compositions soon found their way into the concert-hall where, according to Grieg, “the whole thing sounded surprisingly good”.
And so it does today. In trying to “impart to several of Mozart’s sonatas a tonal effect appealing to our modern ears” Grieg left a telling little document or two on just what those late nineteenth-century Norwegian ears expected. If the C major ‘Sonata facile’ seems to sit even more sedately in the drawing-room, then it soon becomes clear that the light glinting through its windows is not a million miles away from that bouncing off the fjord waters which lap around Troldhaugen.
The C minor Fantasia becomes a dark salon melodrama (shades of Bergljot) which moves from conversation with not a little chromatic prevarication to the hanging of whimsical icicles of figuration around the major-key section. Gently exuberant harmonies cross-weave their way through the sparse trio-sonata-like textures of the opening F major before a trotting bass makes a high-stepping mountain horse of the rondo-finale.
These are Mozart-Kugeln with a bonne bouche or two of the finest Gravadlax on the side. And if these fond tributes are good enough for Elisabeth Leonskaja and Sviatoslav Richter, who could resist tasting them?