This charming release by the ensemble
Les Surprises and its director and keyboardist,
Louis-Noek Bestion de Camboulas, has multiple purposes. First, although it is not easy to find rarities in the oeuvre of a composer as extensively documented as
Mozart, there are some, and a good-sized group is collected here. They range from the seldom-played church sonatas for organ and orchestra, written for Salzburg, to out-and-out odd items like solfege exercises written by
Mozart for his wife,
Constanze. Second, the album is issued, via the
Harmonia Mundi label, by the Musee de la Musique Stradivari at the Philharmonie de Paris as part of a series designed to showcase some of the more unusual items in the museum's collection. There are mechanical flute clocks and a glass harmonica. Some of the instruments are rare indeed. The "piano carre organise" is an instrument of which only a few examples exist, few enough that nobody has devised a consistent English translation of the rather strange term ("organized square piano"). It is a piano with a small organ built into the back, accessible by removing a panel, and it is deployed in a couple of pieces here, especially nicely in the
Kleine Trauermarsch, K. 453a. Beyond these specific aims is a more general phenomenon pointed up by
Bestion de Camboulas. Performers can research historical instruments exhaustively, but it is worth keeping in mind that in
Mozart's day (and that of
Haydn and
C.P.E. Bach, who also show up on the program), people would have played whatever was at hand. A mandolin would have been a perfectly logical choice for the little
Mozart songs included here, and the lovely one played here by
Anna Schivazappa is worth the listener's time in itself. Unquestionably living up to the promise made by its title,
An Unexpected Mozart is both entertaining and thought-provoking. ~ James Manheim
![Mozart: The Complete Piano Sonatas & Variations [2022]](http://prodimage.images-bn.com/pimages/0190296287886_p0_v2_s90x140.jpg "Mozart: The Complete Piano Sonatas & Variations [2022]")