How Mozart must have relished writing the so-called Gran Partita. Its opulent forces gave scope both to his love of rich, sensuous tone colours and his delight in operatic interplay. The kaleidoscopically varied sonorities are matched by an expressive range unmatched in a serenade, from the breezy outer movements, via the two shadowy minor-key Trios, to the sublime Adagio third movement. As in all the best performances, the wind players of the Concertgebouw (the brand speaks for itself) combine refinement of blend and ensemble with a sense of spontaneous enjoyment. At moments I wanted the horns to rasp more uninhibitedly through the texture. That apart, balances are finely judged (basset-horns and bassoons always well in the picture), while BIS’s recorded sound has an ideal fullness and depth.

When they choose, the Concertgebouw players are as mellifluous as you could wish. But they’re not afraid of a touch of abrasiveness, as in the clarinets’ stinging accents in the major-key Trio of the first Minuet. Indeed, I’ve rarely been so aware of the accents peppered through the score, and I’m not complaining. Where most groups – including the wind soloists of the Berlin Philharmonic (EMI, 5/06) and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe (Teldec, 3/91) – bring out the melancholy of the first Minuet’s G minor Trio, the Concertgebouw players, at a similar tempo, give it an urgent, agitato feel, with pungent interventions from first basset-horn. Oboe, clarinet and basset-horn, poets all, phrase and dovetail beautifully in the Adagio. In the Berliners’ rather broader performance the music suggests something between an incantation and a transfigured lullaby. The Dutch players make it more overtly operatic, with a faintly restless edge to the syncopated accompaniments and expressive touches of ornamentation in the recapitulation.

Both outer movements are nicely buoyant, the opening Allegro less molto than some (including the Berliners) but full of pointed phrasing and playful give and take. Mozart doesn’t get much more demotic than the swaying Ländler Trio of the second Minuet – music for a Viennese beer garden – and the rowdy contredanse finale. The Concertgebouw players don’t hold back. The variations, too, are memorably characterised, from the sense of a comic-opera conspiracy in No 3 to the dulcet No 5, where the oboe – the ever-eloquent Alexei Ogrintchouk – transmutes the homely tune into a soulful aria against veiled murmurings from clarinets and basset-horns.

With the Gran Partita collectors really are spoilt for choice. If I’d plump, just, for the Berliners, above all for their rapt Adagio, this superlatively played new recording immediately joins the shortlist for this most sumptuous of serenades. You might be swayed, of course, by the rare Beethoven offered as a digestif: a set of wittily inventive variations on Don Giovanni’s seduction duet for the unlikely trio of two oboes and cor anglais. This is the young firebrand at his most insouciant, and the performance aptly mingles elegance with a roguish twinkle.