Zukerman and Neikrug have chosen to begin this programme with the A major Sonata that was Mozart's last major work for this combination (after it there was only the F major Sonata ''for beginners'', K547), and I don't think this was a good idea. For it is a big, tough work that is hardly easy listening, and following it with two little two-movement works that he wrote shortly after his tenth birthday makes for anticlimax. Of course these early sonatas must be included in these artists' ongoing series of these works, but why not place them first, in chronological order, or at least let the E minor Sonata (which is here placed last) precede them and end with K526?
This said, I am also not happy about the performance of the A major. Admittedly, its first movement, with its tricky cross-rhythms in 6/8 time, has a certain brusqueness, but wit should also be a feature and that is in short supply. Instead, Zukerman in particular offers a kind of gusty aggressiveness which I find unappealing, although the playing has ample authority and there is no doubt that these artists know what they wish to make of the music. In the Andante they are unfailingly clear but uneloquent and without charm, and the movement, which lasts getting on for 12 minutes, seems too long. Their positive style suits the finale better, and they do not make the mistake of rushing it despite the Presto marking, but there are beauties in this work that elude them.
Disappointment continues, alas, in what follows. Zukerman and Neikrug play K28 for all it is worth, and more, but to my mind the playing is too large-scale, with a meatiness that the music neither needs nor bears, and sonority is out of proportion with length and content. K30 is more in scale, but its minuet-finale is disfigured by the same tonal pushes that I dislike in K526. The E minor Sonata—the only one in a minor key—is interestingly played but both of its movements seem to me deliberate and lacking in natural flow, as if the artists were trying to invest the work with a Beethovenian weight that it will not tolerate. The recording has a massive quality that matches the playing.'