Last November David Threasher found himself entranced by Vol 1 of Bavouzet’s Mozart concertos with the Manchester Camerata, concluding: ‘this is a sheer delight and leaves you wondering which way Bavouzet will turn next in his cycle – and when.’ Now we know: Vol 2 similarly pairs two of the less often-recorded concertos (though that’s a relative term in this repertoire) with two early string divertimentos. The latter are the product of the 15-year-old Mozart’s pen and they couldn’t get a more persuasive reading than they do here under Gábor Takács-Nagy’s direction. The D major, K136, has a Baroque‑ish busyness to its opening movement and some nice twists as it turns to the minor, even if I didn’t exactly come away humming the tunes. A stately slow movement, which perhaps overuses its opening theme, is followed by a dartingly energetic finale. The yearning slow movement of K138 offers a hint of the great slow movements of the composer’s maturity, while the humour of its high-spirited finale is enhanced by the pinpoint phrasing and taut interplay of the Camerata strings.

But to get to the main selling point of this disc, we have two concertos from the beginning and end of 1784. While the wind are optional in K449 (but never feel so in this many-hued performance), they certainly are not in K459. Bavouzet enjoys the pomp of the piano’s first entry in the opening movement of K449 but also its inward qualities, some of the most memorable moments coming when he is accompanying the orchestra. Highlights are too many to list but the solemn slow movement is certainly one of them, the strings distinctly more sparing in their use of vibrato than the Czech Chamber Orchestra for Moravec, though both he and Bavouzet are superbly poised. They resist the temptation to take the Bachian finale too fast – it is after all only marked Allegro ma non troppo, and the variety of touches Bavouzet brings to the line is just one of the many wondrous things about this disc (Uchida and Tate sound rather less energised here, thanks in part to the smoother phrasing of the strings). The sense of witty interplay as the time signature switches to 6/8 for the movement’s close is irresistible.

In the first movement of K459, Mozart’s almost obsessive use of the dotted rhythm motif that launches the concerto is treated to an endless variety of colours and phrasing – Uchida and the Cleveland are similarly imaginative, though I find Goode and the Orpheus just a touch too fast here – while the second movement is a true Allegretto; the concluding Allegro assai is an infectiously chattering affair, full of the most delightful conversations between the soloist and his Camerata colleagues.