Nyman and Mozart go back a long way. In the booklet notes to Sebastian Knauer’s ‘The Mozart/Nyman Concert’, Nyman recalls learning Mozart’s piano sonatas as a child. He also attended a performance of Don Giovanni, which led some years later to In re Don Giovanni – Nyman’s minimalist-style reconstruction of the opening 16 bars from the opera’s Catalogue aria. Since then, he has produced many Mozart-inspired works, ranging from the soundtrack to Peter Greenaway’s film Drowning by Numbers to the TV opera Letters, Riddles and Writs.

Some of the six newly commissioned pieces on this disc ostensibly go back a long way, too, connected via a recurring harmonic sequence employed by Nyman in ‘The Masterwork’ Award Winning Fish-Knife, composed in 1979. Numbered K1 to K6 (after Knauer, but also a reference to Mozart’s cataloguer Köchel), this eight-chord pattern supports the undulating figurations heard at the start of K1 and reappears in the background against livelier surface activity halfway through K3, while accompanying a lugubrious bass melody in the left hand in K4.

Other pieces appear to draw more directly on Mozart’s sonatas. The expressionistic K5 and almost bluesy K6 subject the material to a form of musical ‘trawling’ not unlike the composer’s Trysting Fields, where short snippets are stitched together to create a patchwork that suggests Classical music minus the connecting tissue of phrase and periodicity.

Knauer’s adoption of Nyman’s style may have spilt over into his interpretations of Mozart’s sonatas. Interlacing the first, second and third movements of six different Mozart sonatas with Nyman’s set, Knauer’s minimal-interventionist approach prioritises clarity of sound and articulation over more expressive concerns. Even the first movement of the otherwise fiery A minor Sonata, K310, avoids dramatic contrasts and juxtapositions, although plenty of variety and colour permeate Knauer’s dazzling performance of the 12 Variations on ‘Ah, vous dirai-je, maman’ (aka ‘Twinkle, twinkle, little star’), K265, which rounds off the disc. Still, this album is clearly about the juxtaposition of these two composers; if it’s primarily Mozart you want to hear, there are better options available.