Review from Gramophone, Dec.2018

The third volume of Jean-Efflam Bavouzet’s survey of the piano concertos completes his recordings of the six concertos composed for Mozart’s concerts during 1784. And, as if such protean creativity weren’t suitably demonstrated by this magnificent sequence, we also hear the work Mozart himself claimed as hisf avourite, the wonderful Quintet for piano and wind instruments from the same year.

The chamber piece is rightly popular but the two concertos don’t visit the concert hall as often as they might, perhaps because they are overshadowed not only by the others from the same year but also by the heftier works of 1785-86. It’s always a treat to be reminded of these works, though. K450 in B flat is all playfulness in its outer movements, while the central Andante forms its still centre, played here perhaps a touch slower than in other recordings but with a sustained, hymnlike intensity. K451 in D plays off its galant fanfare-like opening against tumbling contrapuntal string lines and concludes with a finale that gives its nursery-simple theme the full motivic workout.

Needless to say, as in the previous two volumes (11/16, 10/17), Bavouzet and the Mancunians under Takács-Nagy find an ideal balance between the light-hearted and the serious in these wide-ranging pieces, which were clearly composed to give Mozart a chance to show off his virtuosity as both performer and composer. The chamber interplay between Bavouzet and the four winds in K452 carries over into the concertos, their all-important inner lines brought out without a hint of self-consciousness. The conjunction of soloist, band and Chandos’s characteristically fine engineering continue as they set out two years ago and conspires in a fascinating portent of what these players might do in due course with the later, larger, deeper concertos.

David Threasher