The G major and C minor Piano Concertos were last paired on disc by Lang Lang and Nikolaus Harnoncourt in performances whose considerable parts added up to a curiously frustrating whole. These two new couplings display, in their very different ways, a clearer and more satisfying symbiosis. (The link between the two works is that K453 and K491 are the only ones in the cycle that conclude with theme-and-variation movements.)

Orli Shaham’s disc is a family affair, being conducted by her husband and issued on her brother’s label, while Benjamin Hochman directs the ECO, an ensemble with a long-established Mozartian heritage, although one with which he doesn’t appear to have collaborated previously. If pushed to reduce one’s feelings on the two discs to a simple formula, it might be that Shaham and Robertson work in pastels, Hochman in primary colours. There’s more to it than that, of course, but the St Louis disc offers a more reactive take on the G major work (K453) especially, treating the concertos explicitly as close cousins to the operas. Hochman, on the other hand, appears to approach them rather as showpieces, more inclined to play across the music’s junctions than to respond to the drama implied by a change of texture, tonality or mood.

This is perhaps as much a result of the recordings as of the performances. Avie’s microphones home in closer on Hochman’s piano and the woodwinds than Canary’s for Shaham. And what woodwinds the ECO contains: the booklet does not list them but they are clearly among the finest London has to offer. In Hochman’s hands K453 is a more genial work than the subtly nuanced piece Shaham and Robertson reveal it to be. Hochman nevertheless responds more acutely to the shadings of the C minor Concerto (K491). Both approaches are appealing: Hochman channelling Mozart the showman, Shaham revealing his theatrical sensitivity to the connotations of a dramatic situation. If Hochman’s is perhaps the less complex course, it impresses for its eager charm, while Shaham’s hints at the cloud behind the silver lining.

Both pianists adopt Mozart’s cadenzas for K453 but diverge in their choices for the first movement of K491, for which no authentic cadenza survives. Hochman devises his own, while Shaham opts for one by Saint-Saëns, which she learnt at an early age by ear from a recording by Robert Casadesus with the Cleveland Orchestra under George Szell (now on Sony, 7/65). Perhaps this displays the greater personality – but it’s Saint-Saëns’s personality rather than Mozart’s, whether genuine or contrived. Nevertheless, it’s a further attraction that might influence a choice between these two engaging discs.