Mozart: Piano Concerti 1-4 (Pasticci) - Malcolm Bilson, American Classical Orchestra, Thomas Crawford

When listening to Mozart’s mature piano concertos, which are amongst his very greatest compositions, it is easy to forget that even he had to learn how best to write such works, and had to experiment in the form. What better way of experimenting than to use existing material provided by other composers and to see how sonata movements by different composers could be turned into concertos. That is what Mozart did with the works included in this set, which is in effect a kind of pendant to the wonderful recordings of the mature concertos that Malcolm Bilson made with the English Baroque Soloists. The first four concertos make use of music by Raupach, Schobert, Homauer and C.P.E. Bach. Despite their varied background and the help - or at least assistance - given by Leopold Mozart in their composition they are surprisingly effective. All are brief and get successively briefer but very much to the point. It would be hard to claim that they are an essential part of every Mozartean’s regular listening but they are entertaining if inconsequential pieces. The performances here are suitably fresh and rhythmically alive, with some lovely sounds from the orchestra using period instruments and the fortepiano, a 1990 copy by Thomas and Barbara Wolf of a Schanz instrument from the 1780s.