Mozart’s penchant for lower-voiced instruments found one of its finest chamber outlets in the Kegelstatt Trio, K498, supposedly composed during a game of skittles. One must imagine that 18th-century Viennese skittles was a far less raucous and beery affair than today’s game, given the melancholy cast of this wonderful and still too little-appreciated work.

And what a cast of players to record it. Viola player Nils Mönkemeyer’s name might be in the biggest print on the CD cover but his regular chamber partner and Mozart specialist William Youn is at the piano and the clarinet part is taken by none other than Sabine Meyer. So this is naturally a performance notable for the close listening and fast reaction between the trio. Perhaps Mönkemeyer’s viola is spotlit just slightly in the sound picture – but then, it is his project, and the range of sounds he draws from his instrument is never less than compelling, and is matched by Meyer’s mellifluous clarinet and Youn’s subtle touch.

The track-list from here on in might give the impression of diminishing returns: a couple of early violin sonatas, arrangements from the ‘London Sketchbook’ and one of the violin-and-viola duos Mozart composed to help his Salzburg colleague Michael Haydn out of a tight spot. But appearances are misleading and the myriad charms of these pieces – shallower, of course, than the Kegelstatt but no less finely wrought – are beautifully illuminated by these players, with violinist Julia Fischer guesting in the Duo and one of the sketchbook arrangements.

The Kegelstatt should be in every collection and this recording will be found to be as good as any. The earlier works into whose context it is placed fit very nearly perfectly to provide an hour and a quarter of pure Mozartian pleasure.