The flourish of notes with which esteemed fortepianist Geoffrey Lancaster opened his performance at City Recital Hall on Monday night may have come as a surprise to those expecting the opening figure of Mozart’s K.570 Piano Sonata. While the unassuming way in which the Perth-based musician and scholar caressed the keys suggested a warm-up exercise, the notes – crisp and nutty on a Paul McNulty replica, built for Lancaster in 2011, of an Anton Walter und Sohn fortepiano from Vienna, circa 1805 – were an improvisational forerunner to the descending arpeggio of Mozart’s Allegro. It was just one of many such flourishes strewn playfully – but with great sensitivity – throughout this intimate and personal recital of Mozart’s piano music.

Geoffrey Lancaster

Mozart himself was partial to Anton Walter’s work as an instrument maker, and his second son Karl Thomas revealed his love of a particular Walter fortepiano. “Most remarkable is the wing-shaped pianoforte for which my father had a special preference to such a degree that he not only wanted to have it in his study all the time, but exclusively used this and no other instrument in all his concerts,...