Following up the six previous issues in this series, this new disc brings the total of concertos now available from Robert Levin and the Academy of Ancient Music to 15. The unusual point is that Levin and Hogwood have preferred the final version of K175 to the one usually recorded. In this the Rondo, K382, written some nine years after the first version appeared in 1773, replaces the original finale. It is certainly a colourful, lively piece, but so is the original at half the length, which not surprisingly is stylistically more consistent. K382 rather suffers from being based on a theme full of repeated notes, made the more insistent by the many repeats.
None the less, it extends our appreciation having this version, when - as is explained in Cliff Essen's long, scholarly note - Mozart also reworked the wind parts of the first two movements. The ideal answer would have been to provide both finales on the same disc, and though the present issue offers generous playing time, there would have been space to do that.
My obvious comparison on all three works has been with Malcolm Bilson in his complete concerto cycle with Sir John Eliot Gardiner and the English Baroque Soloists, but sadly, K175 in its original version is offered only in the complete set of nine discs, not separately, while the Rondo in D comes separately in coupling with K271 and K453. The striking contrast is between the sound of the fortepianos in each, affected, I imagine, by the different recording, the Bilson closer with more body. So it is that Bilson's instrument is unmistakably a piano, where the tinkly top of Levin's evidently smaller fortepiano gives one constant reminders of the harpsichord.
Presumably helped by a very light action, Levin tends to favour speeds a fraction faster than Bilson's, and like Hogwood in his accompaniments he is a degree plainer and more direct in style. The result is consistently fresh and clean, even if I miss the subtler shading of phrase and dynamic in the Archiv version from both soloist and the orchestra. My own preference would be for the Bilson versions of all three concertos, but anyone following the Levin series will not be disappointed, and his own improvised cadenzas add to the freshness. Besides this is a unique coupling.'