As with its two predecessors, the third volume of Kristian Bezuidenhout’s Mozart keyboard music cycle attests to the young fortepianist’s remarkable technical polish and command, as well as his cultivated though sometimes overly studied interpretations. A case in point concerns the first movement of the Sonata in B flat, K333, where Bezuidenhout’s tapered phrase endings, tiny breath pauses and occasional note elongations sound arch and mannered next to Ronald Brautigam’s more direct and songful ebb and flow on BIS (the timbre of Brautigam’s similar McNulty instrument is suaver and more rounded than Bezuidenhout’s thinner, more harpsichord-like sonority), although the Andante cantabile’s legato and detached articulations and subtle harmonic stresses are conveyed with admirable expressive economy. In the Allegretto gracioso, it’s a toss-up between Bezuidenhout’s dry wit and Brautigam’s wider dynamic scope.

Similarly, Bezuidenhout’s scrupulous voice-leading and balances between the hands throughout the variations on Ein Weib ist das herrlichste Ding (by either Schack or Gerl) finds a slightly more animated and spontaneous counterpart in Brautigam. However, the petulant arpeggios of the C minor Fantasy, K396, inspire greater dynamism and dramatic thrust. This review’s first two sentences pretty much apply to the closing work, the F major Sonata, K332. In both sonatas’ first movements, incidentally, Bezuidenhout observes the exposition repeats, while Brautigam also repeats the development and recapitulation sections.