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 Tewes and the delightfully named guitarist
Boris Björn Bagger have produced an enjoyable recording of
Mozart's music -- precisely because they push the boundaries a little bit (which is the key to any really charming concert of transcriptions), not because what they do is so idiomatic to
Mozart. The program includes the Variations on "Ah, vous dirai-je, Maman," K. 265 (the tune is the one Americans call "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star"), and two of the very lightest piano sonatas: the easy Sonata in C major, K. 545, and the Sonata in A major, K. 331, with its central variation set and concluding Rondo alla Turca. As the notes indicate, these do make the transition to mandolin and guitar very easily. It is the other music on the disc that stretches the whole concept a little. There are opera arias: "Voi, che sapete," and "Der Hölle Rache," the Queen of the Night's fiery aria from The Magic Flute. The latter is an unusual inclusion (and doesn't work terribly well on the mandolin), but opera arias in the pre-recording era were always being arranged for small instrumental groups. More surprising are a pair of sacred works: the "Laudate Dominum" aria from the Vesperae solennes de Confessore, K. 339, and the choral motet Ave verum Corpus, K. 618. That one will puzzle the listener and then bring a smile of recognition. There are some glitches here.
Tewes and
Bagger have used technological tricks on other discs, and the "Laudate Dominum" is presented here twice, once for mandolin and guitar and once in an overdubbed mandolin-orchestra version that simply disorients the listener and breaks the mood. On the whole, though, this is a fresh presentation of familiar music.