Patrick Crommelynck and Taeko Kuwata (a lady from Japan) met as fellow students of Dieter Weber in Vienna. They formed a duo after their graduation in 1974 and, according to the enclosed booklet, have since been widely acclaimed ''in most European countries, and in Asia and the USA''. That same booklet includes perceptive notes about the music itself by Crommelynck, and certainly the playing, in its careful give-and-take, supports his claim that Mozart ''adopted a symphonic approach to the duet, attributing equal importance to the two parts''. Even so, I find the readings soft-centred. This music need more positive character, conviction and style.
The players are not exactly helped by their recording. The keyboard tone is a bit synthetic as well as plummy, as if microphones were close in a resonant venue. They could have helped themselves by more judicious use (or non-use) of the right pedal—not least in the F major Sonata's Adagio introduction, where with its yielding rhythm too I felt I was listening to a contemporary of Schumann or Chopin. On grounds of style, I think they rarely make enough of Mozart's arresting dynamics. So often affirmative statements are thrown away just before their true point of climax, lessening the contrast of what follows (like the arrival of the second subject in the C major Sonata's first movement). Surely they should also make more structural landmarks like moments of recapitulation—as in the first two movements of the F major Sonata. Certainly that work's finale needs more sparkle, more vitality. Greater rhythmic crispness would have helped at several other points in both sonatas. The simpler, benigner G major Variations are pleasing enough. Perhaps because of Mozart's own comparatively limited markings, here the players seem more ready to reveal a personal point of view.'