Taking a break from his admired Bartok and Debussy cycles for Philips, Zoltan Kocsis brings all of his customary exuberance, both as pianist and conductor, to Mozart’s Concertos, K413, 453 and 459. Taking his cue from the composer, he emphasizes the virtuosity of all three concertos, adopting brisk, no-nonsense tempos and a minimum of expressive dalliance. Indeed, compared with his finest colleagues, with artists of the calibre of Brendel, Perahia, Pires and Haskil, he is determinedly and disappointingly one-sided. He can be oddly curt and ungenerous with trills in the first movement of K413 and while you may admire the festive stir and bustle with which he launches K453 (the way Mozart’s Allegro becomes Allegro brioso), too many felicities are bypassed. A prophecy of the D minor Concerto’s essential Sturm und Drang at 5'14'' is vigorously caught but once more, in the central Allegretto, Kocsis’s robustness can seem brazen and unyielding. But it is above all in K459, always among the most delectable of Mozart concertos, that Kocsis seems sharp-edged and impatient. His first entry is insufficiently eloquent and even in the central grave Andante he is reluctant to risk a greater sense of nuance, variety and richness. The finale is choppy and assertive rather than buoyant and radiant and so, despite Kocsis’s concern to give us Mozart vigorous and unadorned, it is difficult to enthuse over performances so testy, monochrome and inelegant. The orchestra seems harassed by the conductor’s demands, and Philips’s sound is unsubtle and brightly lit.'