Mozart’s reality isn’t necessarily ours. Scores he adapted for strings only, or strings one-to-a-part, probably augmented his cause and discouraged unauthorised arrangements in an age of no copyright. Today, though, these pared-down versions have little relevance. Or do they? Markus Schirmer and A Far Cry try to buck belief, offering a production that magnifies a 17-piece string band to many times its size and range, a bottom-end heft beyond the capacity of three cellos and a double bass. The piano is mostly forwardly placed, further forward for the cadenzas; and lofty character in, say, the first movement of K415 – ‘magnificent but underrated, its beginning could come out of a symphony in the grand manner’ (Robbins Landon) – is forged by ludicrous artificiality, a control-room creation of multi-miked closeness allied to claustrophobic background that also affects the small Church Sonata. With no natural acoustic, textures are opaque. The sotto voce orchestral opening to the Andante of K414 is, for example, shorn of transparency, shading and delicacy, with perhaps a knock-on effect on orchestral direction and pianism too; both, as recorded, lack detailed expressive inflection. Contrary to the booklet, cadenzas for the concertos are by Mozart, not Schirmer. So are two lead-ins, though the others are by the pianist, as stated. Sound and perspective for Janina Fialkowska and the Chamber Players of Canada are credible though the balance between piano and ensemble varies. If Fialkowska occasionally slips into some tensionless playing in fast movements, her performances of the slow equivalents are insightful. She plays Mozart’s cadenzas and her own lead-ins, and the quintet of strings is as sympathetic towards her as it is in K525. Virtues are to be found in these performances of the concertos but they don’t compensate for reductions in scale brought on by the absence of woodwind and brass (plus timpani in K415) that robs the works on both discs of colour and substance.

Try Christian Zacharias, Martin Helmchen and Robert Levin to understand how right were Mozart’s first concepts as brought to fruition, in each case his intentions revealed through interpretative discernment and intelligent engineering.