This double CD presents some of Mozart’s best-loved instrumental works but in arrangements that will be unfamiliar to most modern listeners. However, 200 years ago it wasn't so easy to listen to works in their original incarnations. Thus it is in anonymous 19th- century arrangements for string quintet and sextet that members of the Australia Ensemble (basically the Goldner Quartet with another musician or two) present these works.

I must admit to having only heard Grieg’s arrangement of the familiar Sonata facile No 16 for two pianos, in a fine live performance by Argerich and Anderszewski (EMI) and while Julie Adam and Daniel Herscovitch may lack some of their flashy virtuosity, they make a convincing and sympathetic case for this and the other three sonatas presented here.

The other works date from much earlier in the 19th century by now unknown composers. In the case of the Sinfonia concertante, the work is scored for much reduced forces – in fact one instrument per part. All of these arrangements were made in order that the works be heard and similarly as string players were more common than virtuosic clarinettists, the much loved Clarinet Quintet took on a new life as a string quintet.

So, as an alternative to Mozart as we know him, these well-played and recorded performances make fine comparative examples of some well-known chamber music.