This violin-and-orchestra-shaped encounter between one of musical history’s forgotten names and one of its … well, Mozart, represents the launch of a new series on the Berlin Philharmonic’s own label which will have as its soloists the orchestra’s own members – a thoroughly apt move in the context of this being an orchestra that very consciously gives its players the freedom to also develop wider solo and chamber careers, as typified by the artist showcased through this series kick-off. North Carolina-born violinist Noah Bendix-Balgley, the orchestra’s first concertmaster since 2014, regularly appears as soloist both with his Berlin colleagues – these particular performances were in fact recorded at concerts in 2022 – and other international orchestras, while also living a multifaceted chamber-playing life whose elements include being first violinist of the Rosamunde Quartet.

Mozart’s First Violin Concerto is hardly unfamiliar music. That said, this Italian-influenced work, composed when he was 17, does get fewer concert outings than his later concertos. Prior to this particular November 2022 performance, the Berliners hadn’t taken it on stage since 1976 with Pinchas Zukerman under Kurt Masur, and they audibly relish it here. This is a flowingly pure-spirited and effortless reading (just revel in the warmly serene expressivity and steady glide of their Adagio), which verily oozes complicity and familiarity, Petrenko and his musicians lovingly all over the score and its conversational opportunities, with Bendix-Balgley’s lithely lyrical sweetness, elegant embellishments and idiomatic self-penned cadenzas sealing the classy deal. Nothing maverick; just Mozart at its silkily glowing, Berliner-style best.

The album’s final 13 minutes then go to two works for violin and orchestra by Leone Sinigaglia (1868-1944), a Turin born, Vienna- and Prague-trained composer whose language represents a melding of Central European-style Romanticism with Piedmontese folk music. His Romance in A (1899) and Rapsodia piemontese (1900) formed part of a March 2022 ‘Lost Generation’ concert honouring composers whose lifetime success was subsequently forgotten due to historical events – in Sinigaglia’s case, his Jewishness as northern Italy fell under Nazi control, leading to him dying of a heart attack while under arrest for deportation to Auschwitz. Neither piece quite sets my pulse racing as a masterpiece I’d cross a city to hear live, but they’re well-crafted, amiable works of their time, with an easy-going melodicism – exceptionally Dvořák-breathed in the case of the Romance – which chimes smoothly both with the Mozart and with Bendix-Balgley’s own aforementioned qualities. There’s also a lot to love about these committed readings, from Bendix-Balgley’s moments of bridge-rattling merriness in the Rapsodia piemontese (a favourite of Kreisler, no doubt drawn by its lyrically folky bravura elements), to the wealth of lovingly captured woodwind dialogue across both, in particular from the clarinet.

Interesting music, beautifully performed. Also only digital, and just 35 minutes long – which is academic if you plan to stream but worth considering if you’d be purchasing as a digital download, given that the Berliner Philharmoniker’s prices are not budget-end ones.