Carl David Stegmann (1751-1826) was a composer, conductor and tenor based mainly in northern and eastern Germany. Alongside his own music, he also made transcriptions of music by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and others for the Bonn publisher Simrock. These three symphonies are from a collection of 25 (in two sets) he prepared in the years following Haydn’s death; Ivan Ilić reports in the booklet the sequence of events that led to his discovery and performance (perhaps the public world premieres) of a handful of them.

Transcriptions such as these can only really be considered successful if they convey to a reasonable degree the brilliance of the originals on which they are based. Stegmann finds some ingenious solutions to the problems of transferring music for strings, wind, brass and drums to the piano: for example, the increasing speed of the accompanying figures in the opening Presto of Symphony No 75. The sound can be needlessly thin, though, with bass lines often remaining at written pitch, rather than dropping the octave to mimic the bass string instruments. Neither can the piano sustain like muted strings in the same symphony’s slow-movement variations or the ecstatic Adagio of No 44.

Much of this is Stegmann’s fault; so too, presumably, are occasional departures from what Haydn actually wrote – but then, we don’t know how corrupt his source material might have been. All the same, Ilić might have made more of Haydn’s dynamics, for example the fz markings that litter No 44 or the rustic horns in the Trio of No 92. Also absent is the nervous energy that drives Haydn’s faster music. No 92’s freewheeling finale should almost trip over itself, its boisterous theme and harmonic trajectory spinning to the very limits of coherence. Rather than scampering impishly, here it sounds more like traversing a rocky outcrop in stiletto heels. Turn to the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra and René Jacobs (Harmonia Mundi, 5/05) to hear how it should really go; to Tafelmusik under Bruno Weil (Sony Classical, 7/95) to hear the Trauer’s finale bristle with barely concealed ire; and to Thomas Fey in Heidelberg (Hänssler Classic, 6/08) to hear No 75’s Presto played with a brilliance and vigour beyond the limits of any pianist.