Gramophone Magazine August 2014

The sixth disc in this highly acclaimed series combine two works in which Mozart's powers as an orchestrator come to the fore. Concerto No. 18 in B flat major, K 456, is sometimes referred to as one of the composers military concertos on the basis of the march-like main theme of the first movement. But more striking is the variety of ways that Mozart employs the various groups of instruments: strings, wind instruments and, of course, the piano. This aspect certainly didn't pass unnoticed by a listener as initiated as Mozart's father Leopold: in a letter to his daughter Nannerl he described how his enjoyment of the orchestral interplay had brought tears to his eyes.

In 1897, Rimsky-Korsakov composed the rough draft for a piano trio in C minor. He polished the middle movements to performance level, but it was left to the composer’s son-in-law, Maximilian Steinberg, to reconstruct its outer movements some 30 years after the composer’s death. While Rimsky disparaged the work in his autobiography, its wistful lyricism and operatic scope hold your attention beyond the sometimes stilted interplay between instruments. The Bekova Sisters turn in idiomatic, sensitively dovetailed work, although violinist Elvira’s oily vibrato seems excessively sweet in soft, sustained passages.

Mendelssohn's highly potent brand of magic here in rhythmically robust live recordings of eight numbers from A Midsummer Night's Dream, and a formidable team of soloists for the spooky Walpurgisnacht.