In the context of a concert you easily could gain satisfaction from these tasteful, solidly turned out Mozart performances. However, in the permanent world of recordings, they face uphill competition. Pianist Pascal Rogé has a beautiful singing tone and refined fingers to match, yet his tendency to treat left-hand accompaniments as backdrops results in textural monotony. He shies away from the inflections and accentuations with which the greatest Mozart pianists illuminate the music’s ceaseless invention and surprise.
Given Raymond Leppard’s splendid Mozartean track record on disc (for example, the superb Sinfonia concertante with Cho-Liang Lin and Jaime Laredo), I would have expected sharper rhythmic pointing in orchestral tuttis, less muffled timpani, and the extraordinary woodwind polyphony in K. 503’s first movement to emerge with more impassioned, chamber-like give and take. And although I do like the conductor’s dark, deliberate path through the K. 279 Andantino, where the stabbing dissonances make a more imposing impact than usual, there’s certainly more potential for operatic repartee and characterful flair than the musicians give us in the slight but charming A major Rondo that concludes a decent disc that should have been better.
