The latest fashion in 'authenticity' seems to be to follow the domestic performing expedients of the past. No doubt we shall soon have, on two ivory eighteenth-century flutes, an impeccable rendering of that notorious arrangement of the ''Hallelujah'' Chorus with which amateur music-lovers of Handel's day reminded themselves of great moments in his music. The present record, the third of the kind that has lately come my way, gives us something a little less extreme; but I cannot imagine why anyone should be anxious to hear four sonatas, beautifully conceived in terms of the piano and the violin, played in a contemporary arrangement on a piano and a flute, embodying a number of modifications to the music to make it seem rather less obviously ill-suited to those instruments. Possibly some readers will find fascination in these eavesdroppings on the dubious practices of amateur eighteenth-century drawing-rooms; I find it difficult to work up much enthusiasm.
The more so as several of the sonatas are singularly alien to the flute. It is true that Mozart began one of his piano and violin sonatas (K301) with the word ''flute'' against what quickly became the violin stave (and whose music dipped below the flute compass within seven bars); but the musical invention in K296 and K379, especially, seems ill-suited to the instrument. The former, anyway not one of Mozart's deepest sonatas, becomes trivialized by the flute's incapacity to bring meaning to phrases that on the violin are full of emotional suggestiveness and by its inability to supply a retiring figurative accompaniment; while the latter, one of the grandest of the sonatas, depends in its opening on the violin's rich lyricism and in the fiery G minor Allegro on its capacity to match the piano's urgency of expression. But the variation finale here goes quite well. In the other two sonatas, the more short-breathed lyrical style suits the flute somewhat better; best is K376, although the Andante becomes rather shallow.
Linda Nicholson plays the fortepiano crisply and brilliantly, with a strong if sometimes rather unyielding rhythm, rarely allowing the music to breathe as it ought. Above forte, the piano tends to sound hard and clattery; either Nicholson is forcing the tone or the recording is excessively close. Nor can I take much pleasure in Linde's playing, which is often ill-defined and unsure in intonation. There are several excellent recordings of these works on piano and violin, and I can see no musical reason for looking beyond them.'