Brave is the soul who dares to allow him or herself to be compared to the great Mozart pianists of the past and present. Ingrid Jacoby does just that in the latest instalment in a continuing concerto cycle, contrasting early – the First Concerto, a pasticcio of sonata movements by Raupach, unknown and Honauer – with late, in the form of the D minor K466, perhaps the most famous of them all, and the G major K453, an instant charmer even if it’s often overshadowed by its big brothers.

Jacoby responds well to the character of K453 but the figurations are so well honed that they come to feel rather too pat, as if Jacoby were keen to show that all that practice had paid off. Minor features such as a sudden piano on the repeat of a figure seem too well prepared and go on to become tics rather than responses to a musical discourse. Nevertheless, her playing is muscular and blends well with the Academy and Marriner, who have this music in their blood and play with their trademark urbanity and flexibility virtually throughout.

Problems set in in the finale, when problems of ensemble become noticeable. The opening movement of the D minor comes a cropper, never finding its groove or rising to the heights of Sturm und Drang it does in the hands of, say, Martha Argerich. Again, in the central convulsion of the second-movement Romance, ensemble comes off the rails and both soloist and orchestra seem to be waiting for each other to make the first move. The early K37, remarkable only for the very fact of its existence, fills up the disc for completeness’s sake.

I can’t imagine this replacing favourite recordings on the shelf: for me, among recent recordings, Argerich in the D minor and Pires in the G major. Jacoby, sorry to say, simply doesn’t have the João factor.