Petr Popelka has recently relinquished the chief conductorship of the Norwegian Radio Orchestra, which he held from 2020. As a farewell, he has recorded this familiar pairing of Mozart symphonies – the two from the triptych of 1788 with prominent parts for clarinets. He has a keen sense of Mozartian style and has clearly rehearsed his erstwhile band well. There’s a refreshing absence of rhythmic distortion à la the likes of Harnoncourt, and plenty of attention to dynamic detail – when Mozart writes p or pp, they really do play quietly.

Tempos are judiciously chosen, too: Popelka pays heed to Mozart’s con moto directive at the head of K543’s slow movement and keeps the Andante of K550 on the move. Minuets are poised but not stately, bucking the recent(ish) trend for reading allegretto as allegro molto. Perhaps the woodwind might have been afforded a little more prominence in the mix, especially as they play so vividly, but that – and a certain degree of audible heavy breathing from the podium or the front desks – doesn’t really warrant quibbling.

So why spoil the ship for a ha’p’orth of tar? To omit the second-half repeat in the finales of both symphonies short-changes both the music and the purchaser. The disc is only a little over 53 minutes long, so it’s not as if space was at a premium. The way Popelka saves his cheeky little liberties so they remain just that rather than affectations – holding back before the final hearing of the clarinet tune in K543’s Trio, for example – whetted the appetite to hear how he might play with Mozart’s Haydnesque use of silence at the end of the symphony, or with the angular entrance to the development in K550’s Allegro assai. Mackerras and the SCO (among many others) take these repeats, presenting a fuller picture of the effect Mozart sought, prioritising his anarchic, innovative spirit over the calm command with which he marshals his material. Being deprived of that opportunity is a black mark against a recording that is otherwise uncommonly well played and hugely enjoyable.