The names of Andras Schiff and Sandor Vegh are distinguished ones in this repertory, and collectors following their series of the Mozart piano concertos will need little encouragement to acquire these two discs and the four mature concertos that they contain. The characteristics of these performances are immediately recognizable, though like many good things hard to define. Among them is a generally positive delivery (but see below for a reservation about this) allied to a certain sweetness; listen, for example, to the tone colour and tonal shaping of the woodwind solos in the first movement of the E flat major Concerto, the slow movement of the C minor and the finale of the C major, whose quality owes much to the presence of players like the flautist Aurele Nicolet. Then there is the pianist's articulation, sometimes quasi-staccato in quick passagework (rather more often than I like, I confess) but clear and unfailingly expressive even in rapid fingerwork. The conductor and soloist are adroit in their management of transitions, whether of mood, pace, texture or dynamics, and in any combination, and their tempos are also generally well chosen. (Although I doubt whether the middle movements of Concertos Nos. 22 and 25 are at what Mozart meant by Andante, ''a walking pace'', they are done with disarming grace.) While offering praise, I will add that the recording in the Salzburg Mozarteum is a good one, and significantly less reverberant than I remember from some earlier issues in this Schiff/Vegh series. Finally, these artists are able to balance the component parts of a movement, and of a whole concerto, skilfully, so that, for example, finales seem to flow naturally from slow movements, just as those movements do from opening ones.
Talking of finales, that of the E flat major Concerto (in rondo form, as so often the case) has a fine fluency and buoyancy, as has that of its successor in A major, vivid yet unhurried, and the C major, too. Schiff and Vegh know how to bring out the joy in this music without sacrificing delicacy, a delicacy without the prettification that we occasionally hear from other pianists such as Mitsuko Uchida on Philips. In fact, Schiff brings such tonal finesse to the cadenza (at 9'40'') in this finale that it is hard to remember he is playing a big modern Bosendorfer. Performances such as his make a good argument for the viability of modern instruments here as an alternative to period ones. Listen also to his opening solos in the Adagio of the A major Concerto and the Larghetto of the C minor for other illustrations of this point.
What of criticisms? Well, the opening Allegro of the A major Concerto could have had a little more forward energy without losing the grace that these artists offer in good measure. That's a small cavil, but I do have major reservations about the C minor Concerto, feeling that its force is insufficiently realized in the first movement. It's there in forte passages but not in piano ones, as at the start. The piano's first entry, too, lacks firmness and the semiquaver passage beginning at 3'51'' conveys nothing of the ''Sturm und Drang'' that other pianists find in the notes. The same applies even more to the violently modulating passage at 5'08'' which is here simply lightweight. Indeed we are halfway through this great movement before Schiff gives us a real forte, and overall it disappoints, though the cadenza (his own) is well thought out. The variation-form finale, too, is not angry and determined enough, as if the artists have not taken full notice of the character of this concerto, one of the only two minor-key works in the series. The performance of the C major Concerto is more convincing, having authority as well as affection, but even here I felt at times that still more of the former quality was needed to hold the 15-minute first movement together, and Schiff's cadenza of nearly two minutes seems discursive (indeed, going out of its way to quote Mozart's ''Non piu andrai'' from Le nozze di Figaro, a work dating from the same year).'