Ever mindful of the accessibility of his works for amateur musicians, Mozart wrote, in a letter to his father, that his Piano Concertos nos. 11–14 could be performed ‘a quattro’, with the accompaniment of string quartet rather than with full orchestra. Ignaz Lachner, a contemporary and associate of Schubert, saw great potential in chamber music arrangements and produced performing versions for piano, string quartet and double bass of many of the Mozart piano concertos. His considerable skill as a composer enabled these concertos, among them nos. 18 and 22, to flourish in a more intimate setting.

The Fine Arts Quartet has made a number of Naxos recordings, for example Mendelssohn’s String Quintets (8570488) and Glazunov’s chamber music (8570256) which were named Recordings of the Year by MusicWeb International, Schumann’s string quartets (8570151) hailed by the American Record Guide as ‘one of the very finest chamber music recordings of the year’.

Pianist Alon Goldstein performs on Vol.24 of the complete Scarlatti keyboard edition on 8574196; Crescendo (France) wrote: ‘The ornamentation is precise, the accents are deliberately striking, even provocative, the beautiful overall architecture well thought out. We ask for more Scarlatti to be played like this!’