Having auditioned Vol 7 in Adam Fischer’s Mozart cycle (12/09), we know what to expect from him: characterful readings, sharp delineation of dynamics, occasional eccentricities, all presented with a rich string sound and first-class woodwind-playing. Fischer and his Danish forces now reach Vol 4, and a group of four symphonies from 1771 or thereabouts.

Mozart is often at his best in the slow movements of his symphonies of this period (remember he was 15 at the time of these works). His lyrical impulse provides the most memorable music, for example the C minor siciliano of K96 contrasting with the terse, brassy ceremony of the opening Allegro, or the chaste romanza of Symphony No 12, with its surprise appearance of obbligato bassoons, providing a counterweight to the galant bluster of the outer movements.

Then there are Fischer’s idiosyncratic insistences on making the music more “interesting” than it already is: laying on with a trowel the Hungarian-ness of the finale of Symphony No 12, for example, or the upper strings ticking like crickets in the second subject of No 13’s Allegro. Most eccentric, though, are Fischer’s booklet commentaries for each work. On the first movement of Symphony No 14, for example, he writes: “I am standing on the beach. The water in the bay is blue, so is the sky. Two ducks swim by, the smaller one, with some delay, imitating each movement of the larger one. In the distance gulls are flying.” Quite. It’s with a mixture of trepidation and cruel curiosity that I anticipate his thoughts on the final symphonies of the 1780s, works about which more bilge has been written than virtually any others, and by far greater scribes than Fischer or I.