Having walked out of his church job in Salzburg for the first time in August 1777, Mozart was packed off by his father to try and find work in Paris, where he and his mother arrived in March 1778 after dithering at length in Mannheim, Augsburg and Munich. The journey was a disaster: Mozart failed to find work anywhere, was rebuffed by his first love, Aloysia Weber, in Mannheim, and witnessed the premature death of his mother in the French capital. His letters back to disapproving Leopold in Salzburg smack of shame and self-exculpation, not to mention armfuls of expectation management.

One letter from Augsburg, however, early in the trip, bursts with excitement at the headstrong composer’s discovery of the pianos of Johann Andreas Stein, which were not only uncommonly finely built but featured the innovation of a new escapement action, which increased the instrument’s responsiveness and tonal range. Accordingly, Keiko Shichijo opts for a Stein (from slightly later, c1802) for two sonatas associated with the Paris journey – including the austere A minor, K310, said to be expressive of Mozart’s grief at losing his mother – plus one earlier one and a pair of single-movement works from the 1780s. It’s an instrument of great personality, even-toned across its range and capable of a whisper all the way up to a throaty roar. There’s some minor action noise, especially in the opening Fantasia – but then, you’d creak a bit if you were over 200 years old.

So much for the instrument. For insights into performance practice Shichijo leans not only upon treatises of the time (CPE Bach, Leopold Mozart) but also on piano rolls made by Carl Reinecke, born during the lifetimes of Beethoven and Schubert and said to have been ‘thoroughly conversant with the best traditions of Mozart-playing’. Shichijo remarks upon his use of unnotated expressive devices, including ornamentation, arpeggiation of chords, desynchronisation of hands and a free approach to rhythm and tempo. She admits these are sometimes extreme by modern standards – and it’s true that this highly reactive approach might not be for everybody – but few of the liberties she takes feel as if they emerge in any way other than organically from the music and from the moment of performance. It’s an intensely personal reading of these five works but, coupled with the irresistible sounds she draws from the instrument (of which it would have been nice to have a picture in the booklet), it’s one that grabs the attention and presents an enticing alternative view of them.