Here we have another of those discs that revives the practice of arranging well-known music for domestic performance. These arrangements date from the first two decades after Mozart's death, a time when, without benefit of radio or records, the only way to hear music at home was to play it yourself. You may feel (as I do) that these days when it is just as easy to put on a record of Don Giovanni (or any of the other operas excerpted here) as this one, there is not a great deal to be gained by listening to ''La ci darem'' on a flute and oboe rather than, for example, Thomas Allen and Elizabeth Gale with an orchestra.
Hansjorg Schellenberger, the excellent oboist here, asks in his note ''What if the uniformity of sound were to prove tedious... if the absence of vocal expression were painfully obvious... if the sound of two melody instruments without a bass were to leave one feeling that the whole enterprise lacked a foundation...?'' What indeed? Well, perhaps a reminder of how the music-lover at the turn of the eighteenth century disported himself is salutary; but in fact this disc doesn't quite offer that, either, because these arrangements were originally for two flutes and have not only been adjusted and the parts rewritten to accommodate flute and oboe and exploit their contrast, but the original ornamental and decorative flourishes have been eliminated to restore the music ''to its pristine form''. Well, I'm all for the pristine, and would go a step further and get out my records of the operas themselves, with voices and orchestra, and congratulate myself on being so lucky as to live in an age when one can hear Mozart operas daily without having to put up with the unutterable monotony of 67 minutes of flute and oboe alone. That said, it is only fair to add that, even if it isn't worth doing, it is done marvellously well by these musical and immensely accomplished players, and the record can be wholeheartedly recommended to anyone who prefers Mozart operas without voices or orchestra.'