Mozart [Concerto] Concertos for Horn and Orchestra – D, K412/K386b (with two versions of Rondo); E flat, K417; E flat, K447; E flat, K495. Concerto movement for Horn and Orchestra in E, KAnh98a/K494a (cpted. Jeurissen). Fragment for Horn and Orchestra in E flat, K370b/K371 (recons. Jeurissen). Herman Jeurissen (hn); Netherlands Chamber Orchestra / Roy Goodman.

Olympia (Mid  price) (CD) OCD470 (79 minutes: DDD).

The gentle tinkling of a lively harpsichord continuo, and some lithe chamber-orchestral accompanying, indicates that these performances are likely to be close in sensibility to those of Anthony Halstead with Hogwood. Halstead has, indeed, recorded the repertoire with Roy Goodman himself and his Hanover Band: Herman Jeurissen is on the whole a little more breezy, less urbane in matters of phrasing and inflexion. He substitutes for Halstead’s understated wit a particular quality of indefinable and irresistible tongue-in-cheek humour which bubbles up in the vagaries of his cadenzas – richly curlicued in K447, audacious in K495.

The main interest of this disc, though, lies in its claim to present ‘the complete horn concertos’. Mozart did, after all, set to work on a total of six in his lifetime. Jeurissen, like John Humphries before him (for Halstead and for Eric Ruske), has orchestrated the sketched Rondo, K371 and completed the unfinished Concerto movement in E major, K494a. He has also placed in cogent order the jigsaw of fragments (cut up as memorabilia by Mozart’s son!) which forms the Allegro, K370b, possibly intended by the composer to precede the Rondo, K371.

Here, Jeurissen’s reconstruction captures nicely the fun, athletic daring and slight awkwardnesses of the early experimental concerto, possibly originally written for the horn player of the contemporary Idomeneo. The Rondo is orchestrated very much with an ear to this opera, notably in some delightful wind writing.

Jeurissen’s completion of K494a continues the long-limbed arpeggio-based movement and leisured sequential mode of the broad introductory ritornello which indicates that Mozart possibly bit off more than his player Joseph Leutgeb would have been able to chew. Whatever the composer’s reason for leaving the work incomplete, Jeurissen obliges with a hypothetical but engagingly dark minor-key development, lit by little Figaro-esque modulations and fleeting prophecies of the K495 Concerto.

All of this is enticing enough. But the disc ends with an alternative K412 Rondo overlaid with the saucy comments (in Italian, and it’s just as well ...) which Mozart directed at the unfortunate Leutgeb, here irresistibly declaimed by Giorgio Mereu.

HF