The booklet for this German release tries to build a case for being more than simply an arrangement of Mozart's music for a perennially popular instrumental pair, pointing out that the sound of a mandolin and guitar approximates that of the early fortepiano, and that in adapting Eine kleine Nachtmusik for mandolin and guitar, not a single note had to be dropped. The arguments are dubious; much of the music here was not piano music originally, and Mozart's music generally avoids extreme ranges of any kind. All that really ...
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The booklet for this German release tries to build a case for being more than simply an arrangement of Mozart's music for a perennially popular instrumental pair, pointing out that the sound of a mandolin and guitar approximates that of the early fortepiano, and that in adapting Eine kleine Nachtmusik for mandolin and guitar, not a single note had to be dropped. The arguments are dubious; much of the music here was not piano music originally, and Mozart's music generally avoids extreme ranges of any kind. All that really needed to be said was that mandolin-guitar duos were popular in Mozart's day, and that arrangements of the kind heard here would certainly have been considered feasible for Mozart even if he never wrote for the medium. (It's remarkable, when you think about it, how little purely occasional music Mozart wrote -- and that when he did write some, he often, as in the Serenade in C minor, K. 388, completely overturned the basic premises of the medium.) All that said, mandolinist Detlef...
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