If ever you needed a musical snapshot of Vienna between the wars, this is it. (Even though the Third Quartet was composed after WWII). The benign shadow of the elderly Brahms occasionally hovers; likewise, the less benign shade of Schoenberg ­ but – don’t worry, the music occasionally strains at tonality but never becomes atonal; and, most of all, there’s the hallmark warm, luscious, late Romantic lyricism of Korngold, Mahler’s true heir. The way he creates a sudden dissonance, a chromatic shadow and ensuing chill is very Viennese, as if reminding us not to just admire the flowers but to remember the dark sinister roots beneath. It’s the equivalent of the moment in Korngold’s film scores when Bette Davis accidentally discovers the love letters in a secret drawer – a sort of musical Freudian slip. The First Quartet is the most complex, yet beguiling, and the lyrical second subjects and main ideas radiate an almost operatic sensuality and at other times a hymn-like beauty. The Doric Quartet dispatch with insouciance what must be nightmarishly difficult filigree work in the perky intermezzo, while the finale uses Korngold’s musical motto Motiv des fröhlichen Herzens (Motif of the cheerful heart) which he liked……

Pianist Mitsuko Uchida and violinist Mark Steinberg have been playing these sonatas together for 12 years now. Their playing is as natural as breathing. Choosing just four must have been a difficult task. The result is remarkable, giving us a sweeping portrayal of the depths Mozart was able to find within this most honed-back of all chamber ensembles. The first two (K377 and K303) are relatively optimistic and playful pieces, although even these give glimpses of the depths Beethoven would later plumb in this genre. But Mozart finds his own emotional depths in the work in E Minor, K304, written just after his mother died. This is a surprisingly bleak and sorrowful composition, devoid of the sunlight which flows abundantly from most of his work. The final quartet, in A major K526, was written much later and is a far more complex work showing the composer’s full artistic maturity. It is as important a work as anything he composed, intense and dramatic, though with abundant joy and light. Our two performers grace these compositions with lucid, intelligent playing; and the warm, intimate recording serves them with distinction.

I was amazed to read one review of this performance of Sibelius’s First Symphony which confidently asserted that Pietari Inkinen was to be congratulated on his achievement in effacing virtually all traces of Tchaikovsky from the music, as if that were a major criterion in assessing it! Inkinen is no young man in a hurry in Sibelius: his account of the First Symphony, at 40 mins, is one of the longest in the catalogue. His certainly doesn’t stint on the Romantic rhetoric either, pace my fellow reviewer. His reading is leisurely and well upholstered – poles apart from, say, Osmo Vänska’s trim, taut and terrific approach. These recordings are quite closely miked, meaning, inter alia, we hear plenty of harp throughout, especially in my favourite passage, the delicate section of the slow movement where sonic magic is made by the harp, woodwinds and triangle. Alas, the string sound is occasionally thin but, in general, the playing is distinguished and the timpani is well captured in the scherzo. In the unjustly neglected Third – just as elusive in its own way as the Sixth – Inkinen inclines toward steady tempos and I particularly like the way he manages the often awkward…

It is a sweet-sounding instrument, quite emotional and even, in her hands, elegant, but always within a relatively narrow band of expression when compared to the more virtuosic concerto partners, the piano, violin or the unabashed French horn. Mozart’s only surviving concerto for bassoon (he wrote three others, all lost) is a charming work, written when the composer was only 18 years old. It features a particularly beautiful andante, which has a delicious theme anticipating his famous aria Porgi amor from The Marriage of Figaro. The main item on the disc is a recently-discovered concerto by Gioachino Rossini, or at least attributed to him by some scholars. If they are correct, this would be the last piece he wrote for orchestra, before he left Bologna to live the high life in Paris. Sadly, it is a rather perfunctory piece with some pleasing moments but concluding with a rondo in which all high spirits seem assumed. It suggests, more than anything else, that the now-retired Rossini had said all he wanted to say in music. More interest is found in two 19th-century concertos by Conradin Kreutzer and Bernhard Crusell, who ride above the limitations of the solo instrument to provide some…

Don’t be misled by the “country-and-western” cover shot, or the bio that stresses his interest in sport and surfing.