Surprisingly, this well-filled disc begins not with one of the sonatas but with the Adagio and Allegro in F minor, written at the end of Mozart's life, along with the better-known and finer Fantasia in the same key, for a mechanical organ in a clock owned by Count Deym. He was bored with the commission (and the instrument's ''little pipes... too high-pitched and childish for my taste''), but the work is worth hearing: its shape is not what the title suggests but, rather, a vigorous baroque-style Allegro movement in F major flanked by Adagio music in the minor key. Frankl and Vasary play it with conviction and dignity, but it seems an odd piece to precede the cheerful and conventionally rococo Sonata in B flat major written some 16 years before.
This Sonata, too, is played with admirable musicianship and an ensemble that is not merely mechanical but one of phrasing, texture and tone. The sustaining pedal is rightly used with discretion by whichever of these two artists operates it, presumably the one taking the lower part. The G major Sonata, K357/497a, is a hybrid, consisting of two movements of which one is Johann Anton Andre's completion and coupling of two fragments, a 98-bar Allegro and a 158-bar Andante—the second of which Constanze Mozart, however, considered to be related to the Andante and Variations in the same key which comes next on this disc. Andre contributed a faster following section which the booklet calls a ''coda in a slightly quicker tempo'' but is longer than the Andante and was clearly intended as a finale.
The Andante and Variations, on a graceful theme that was probably Mozart's own, is by some way a more inventive and characterful work and the two artists play it sensitively, with well-chosen tempos and good textures. It would have been useful to have index marks for the five variations, but this doesn't matter too much since the work lasts less than nine minutes. The C major Sonata which ends the disc is also well shaped, though its Andante could flow more smoothly and the finale is a touch deliberate. In all, this disc makes for pleasing listening, and no doubt its companion volume will appear in due course with the other sonatas and F minor Fantasia. The natural-sounding recording was made in All Saints, Petersham.'