Julien Chauvin and Le Concert de la Loge reprise the overture-concerto-symphony formula of their previous Mozart recording (1/22) with a coupling of clarinet-drenched orchestral works and opening with a performance of the Don Giovanni Overture that is light on its feet, the roar of the greasepaint vividly perceptible. A perky approach to the great A major Piano Concerto, too, brings out its kinship with opera buffa, in preference to the expansive sophistication so often favoured in the opening Allegro. Andreas Staier plays a Christoph Kern copy of a Walter piano of the type Mozart owned and upon which he performed around Vienna in the late 1780s.

Staier’s approach is of the interventionist type, playing in introductions and tuttis and ornamenting freely. Too freely, perhaps: his embellishments in the Adagio from as early as bar 2 distort the line and become more and more attention-seeking as the movement wears on, obscuring the interplay between soloist and woodwinds, rather like a garrulous dinner guest who dominates conversation. If he was at my table I’d have told him to leave long before the frothy, delicious dessert of the finale. Staier’s accompaniments in the outer movements and a certain lack of dynamic variety diminish the contrast between tutti and solo in the faster music. Your experience may differ but this one isn’t for me.

That’s a shame, as the G minor Symphony receives a truly involving reading, with plenty of imaginative phrasing and sufficient focus on the winds – the all-important clarinets and horns especially. An audience poll selected the epithet ‘La Dodécaphonique’, after the almost-12-note passage at the outset of the finale’s development. It’s a shame, then, that the second-half repeat isn’t observed (either here or in the Andante) to bring it back for another hearing: a black mark on a disc lasting well under an hour.