Though none of these works is authentic Mozart, the record is an attractive one. The concerto by Giuseppe Ferlendis was for a while thought to be real Mozart, and though it is easy to say so now that it has been identified, I really wonder how a scholar of the stature of Saint-Foix could have been taken in by it. Ferlendis was a contemporary oboist whom Mozart clearly admired, and who used to play the original of the Oboe Concerto which we only know in its surviving flute version as K3 14. He turns out a nifty little concerto, fun to listen to and clearly fun to play; there is no sign of the hand of glory, but some very pleasing music-making, especially in hands as expert as Holliger's.
The Concerto, K313, is a Holliger arrangement made on the same basis as K314: that is to say, he has transposed it from G down to F, a more oboish key, as if it too were the flute arrangement of a lost oboe original, like K314. Why not? It works well, and sounds delightful. As for the concert arias: these are more problematical, but Holliger has a point when he observes that in the early nineteenth century Mozart was often criticized for making his vocal parts too instrumental and vice versa, so why not put it to the test? These two arias are simply played as if they were oboe concertos, and I have to say that, listening to them without getting out the scores of the originals, I was much beguiled by the effective and apparently idiomatic writing for the oboe. Would Mozart have objected to this exercise?'