This newest disc in Malcolm Bilson's Mozart concerto series—the penultimate one—includes along with two of the less remarkable works, the superb Double Piano Concerto in a really splendid and vivacious performance. This always seems to me one of Mozart's wittiest works, in its dialogues and its interchanges, here, as in the violin/viola Sinfonia Concertante, Mozart devised a special manner of writing to accommodate the possibilities of the genre, and the harmonious rivalry with which each pianist caps what the other has just played is one of its most delightful features. And it works particularly well when the pianists are so well attuned, yet perceptibly different in style and in actual sound, as Bilson and Robert Levin are here. Although both instruments are the work of the fine American maker Philip Belt, on the same model (Mozart's own concert instrument) and made within a year of one another, Levin's seems to me faintly brighter in tone in the upper register, and his playing is marginally more flexible in rhythm, with a hint of extra freedom in the more improvisatory music. He is no less scrupulous over articulation, however, than is Bilson.
Hearing the work on period instruments makes a considerable difference, partly because pairs of modern pianos invariably match absolutely as fortepianos do not, but mainly because textures are so much lighter and clearer: when both instruments are playing at once it is far easier to hear exactly what they are playing. Having said that however, I should add that on this particular record the balance between soloists and orchestra seems to have shifted somewhat in the latter's favour: I found it difficult, especially in the Andante, to find a volume level at which the pianos were clear without making the orchestra too loud, and at several points the pianos are practically submerged when the orchestra plays (for example the C minor passage in the finale, ending in bar 269).
Compared with K365, the other two concertos here are modest pieces. K242 comes over entertainingly, with very neat and crisp playing in the first movement, some attractive textural patterns in the second (never very clear on modern instruments) and a lively final minuet. In K238 the weight with which the orchestra come over is apt to make the soloist sound almost puny. Still, Bilson has interesting things to say about the music—for example, the expressive sense he makes of the slightly puzzling articulation Mozart asks for at one point in the first movement (bars 69ff.), or some of the poetic touches in the Andante, or his brilliant little sallies in the finale (where again the piano is several times submerged when the orchestra is playing). The EBS, as usual, provide shapely and responsive, well discliplined playing, and sound considerably more numerous than the 6.5.4.3.2 string band specified in the accompanying booklet, in fact at times almost like a modern symphony orchestra.'