Bach reclaimed by “mainstream” musicians is always welcome, never more so than when the director is so intent on projecting the virtues of the music for their own sake. These performances from the Teatro Reggio Emilia will be familiar to those who acquired the Medici Arts DVD, favourably reviewed by Lindsay Kemp in these pages, but the audio-only experience draws out a super-contented gestural world which had only intermittently communicated itself before.

Claudio Abbado’s Orchestra Mozart is a hybrid in terms of stylistic provenance, in both the background of the players and artistic results. Some, like the leader Giuliano Carmignola, are fully fledged period players – sporting all form of bows, if I remember rightly from the DVD – while trumpeter Reinhold Freidrich dazzles unashamedly with a state-of-the-art piccolo trumpet. It’s an entirely 21st-century set-up of flexibility and mix-and-match. Yet the coherence of the whole is a tribute to Abbado’s ear for detailed refinement and clarity of thought. Only occasionally does over-regulated articulation, as in the first movements of Concertos Nos 1 and 3, suggest a wish to dim over-zealous “period” headlights with a touch of Boultian legato.

The hallmark of this set is the ambition to create lithe, beautiful and elegant statements in which witty, sophisticated dialogues are carried off within a heady textural landscape. Some may find the Allegros of the Third, Fourth and Fifth Concertos just too buoyant and will wish to return to the ruddy, warm-blooded joy of Trevor Pinnock’s Award-winning set of 2008 (Avie, 3/08). The Fourth is perhaps the only concerto that takes time to find its feet, and the recorder-playing appears somewhat at odds with the rest. Yet there is generally a consistent virtuoso spirit and unity of purpose here of a kind which Chailly only intermittently achieves with his Gewandhaus forces (Decca, 5/10).

The Fifth spins like a happy top, with stunningly immediate harpsichord-playing from Ottavio Dantone, the Second is a tactile chamber Elysium and the Sixth full of bittersweet, aristocratic richesse. These are life-affirming live performances (quite a few surface noises, especially on headphones) which glide effortlessly on to the high table.