Writing to his father in 1785 Mozart tells of his new Piano Concerto K466 (and 467), complete with cadenzas, saying “I have everything in hand”. Alas, as Michael Rische tells us in his notes, the cadenzas have never been found, and neither have Mendelssohn’s. And so with enterprising foresight he gives us the whole of the D minor Concerto with no fewer than 10 cadenzas by seven composers, some familiar, some obscure. Rische’s performance is sensitive but lacks underlying urgency and the sort of pianistic mastery shown on recent recordings by, say, Andsnes or Anderszewski, so interest focuses on the cadenzas, of which his own are the most strange and radical.

In the first movement he lets Mozart’s Sturm und Drang rise like yeast to the surface in several near-Alkanesque gestures, with an even stranger blaze of almost surrealist syncopation in the finale. Busoni’s cadenza seems to me unduly heavy-handed and so too does Brahms’s, leaving us with Beethoven’s more familiar firstmovement offering where he takes his hat off to Mozart’s storming potential. Hummel is lighter and, not surprisingly, more overtly brilliant; and Mozart’s son’s offering (here recorded for the first time) is exuberantly romantic. Most interesting of all is Beethoven’s surprisingly unfamiliar last-movement cadenza. This, then is one for the scholars and those curious to see what commentary, whether alien or sympathetic, one composer makes on another. Rische is pleasantly recorded and partnered, and now we shall look forward to hearing him in Beethoven’s Third Concerto where he promises us six different cadenzas.