If one wanted to recollect a beautiful evening at the opera in the pre-record era, the only possibility was to play the same music with the instrumentation of a chamber music ensemble. Thus, a whole flood of opera arrangements, some of them quite demanding, came into existence during that time - everything from piano solo up to several instruments.

The popular and internationally acclaimed composer Joseph Küffner (1776-1856) wrote a great number of these pieces. His arrangement of the Barber ...