Malcolm Bilson, American Classical Orchestra/Thomas Crawford Nimbus****

Malcolm Bilson’s highly regarded period-instrument recordings of Mozart piano concertos with John Eliot Gardiner in the 1980s and 1990s didn’t include the earliest concertos. Bilson recorded them instead in his native US, with what was then the Orchestra of the Old Fairfield Academy, since renamed the American Classical Orchestra. Mozart’s earliest four concertos (K37 and K39-41), written at the age of 11, are pasticcios, arrangements of works by a range of other composers; the three later concertos of K107, from five years later, are arrangements of JC Bach. Mozart may have been engaged in studies to hone his craft, but the results still sound remarkably well in these finely judged performances, and the fill-up, his Symphony No 14, is even better. See wyastone.co.uk