The five Mozart violin concertos all date from the composer's late teens in Salzburg, and indeed Grove dates them all as belonging together as a group written during 1775. However, according to Robert Dearling's booklet note with this issue, this first of them was actually written a couple of years earlier. The designated soloist was Antonio Brunetti of the Salzburg court orchestra, and though the composer apparently thought him ''coarse and ill-bred'' he took enough trouble here to give him music of some character. In fact, this First Concerto is less striking than its successors, but in a performance such as this even its more conventional gestures come to effective life, for Anne-Sophie Mutter plays it with vigour and conviction. She colours the Allegro moderato first movement enough in tonal and rhythmic flexibility to avoid any sense of routine but not to the extent that it is over-projected, though once or twice I do wonder whether, in her wish to lend an Italianate bravura to the solo part as a whole, she comes close to this—for example in the cadenzas to all three movements, where she has a free hand and rather lets herself go. I wonder, too, if Mozart expected or wanted Brunetti to take the finale so briskly, even with his marking of Presto. However, I should not grudge my praise for this sweet-toned and characterful performance. Sir Neville Marriner and his Academy of St Martin in the Fields provide Mutter with a warm yet poised support, special praise being earned by the horns. Mozart wrote the Adagio in E major, K261 as an alternative and somewhat shorter slow movement for the A major Concerto, No. 5, and this is a delightful piece that here receives an affectionate performance.
The Sinfonia concertante, K364 is, of course, a more mature work and one whose beauty goes deeper. The violist Bruno Giuranna, who joins Mutter here, is no stranger to the work, having recorded it before and indeed directed it for Claves. He proves a good partner in that his rich yet vigorous tone matches the violinist's, and certainly there is much to satisfy here. Nevertheless, for all the technical mastery that is in evidence, the last degree of musical refinement is lacking and there is something wearing about the energy that the artists bring to the big first movement and the finale. Worth hearing though it is, I cannot class this performance with the celebrated one by Itzhak Perlman and Pinchas Zukerman and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra under Zubin Mehta, recorded by DG at a concert in Tel Aviv in 1982, which is wonderfully spontaneous and has a memorably serene slow movement. The present recording was made last June in Studio No. 1 at Abbey Road, and is richly toned but not overly so.'