The Momentum continues, Mozart in 1786, Leif Ove Andsnes including a rumbustious account of the D-major Rondo K485, as lively as you could want, and then with Matthew Truscott and Frank-Michael Guthmann the B-flat Piano Trio K502 in a spontaneous, nicely interplayed reading, adding Joel Hunter for the E-flat Piano Quartet K493, which leaps off the page with a players’ rapport that avoids staleness with the music, almost as if Wolfgang Amadeus walked in with ink-wet manuscripts: “Hey guys, try this, just finished it.”
With the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Ch’io mi scordi de te K505, the soprano concert aria with piano obbligato, in which Christiane Karg is a nice mix of dramatic and lyrical, and a couple of Piano Concertos. The A-major (K488/No.23) sparkles (with cadenzas by the composer); weightier and darker matters inform the C-minor (K491/No.24), minor-key tribulations not overdone in a moving-along performance notable for some shapely woodwind solos, a heightened-emotion state, a first-movement cadenza attributed to Anonymous (what a catalogue) that is rather good, muscular tuttis (crisp timpani), a flowing Larghetto – here a song-without-words with an attentive serenading woodwind consort – and a resolute Finale.
A slight doubt, however: possibly there is too much tendency to avoid over-interpretation, to let these scores speak for themselves, which they do admirably of course and here with notable musicianship, yet with unindulgent tempos (quite fleet in fact) some passages do not receive a needed foot-off-the-pedal moment of expansion, then this in many ways outstanding release is firstly for those who consider these works have attracted too much exploratory baggage over decades: of the slow movements, only K488’s goes fathoms-deep.
No problems on the audiophile front. Sony Classical 19439854512 (2 CDs).