For his first recording of Mozart concertos, Éric Le Sage, in the company of the Gävle Symphony Orchestra and oboist/conductor François Leleux, programmes two strikingly different concertos, pairing the (mainly) bucolic G major (K453) of 1784 with the C minor (K491) of two years later.

You can tell much about an interpretation from the opening bars of K491. There’s a polish to the legato strings, the wind answering in kind, and Le Sage’s entry is sensitive and beautifully shaped. Compared to the rhapsody of Richard Goode or the ever-changing colours and dynamics of Leif Ove Andsnes, though, this is relatively plain. There’s a certain formality to the conversation between soloist and ensemble, too, lacking the rhapsody of the great chamber orchestras – the SCO for Brendel, the Orpheus for Goode or the Mahler CO for Andsnes. The magical moment where the music switches from a major-key sojourn in E flat back to the minor (5'03") passes for less than it can. But I very much like Le Sage’s unorthodox choice of Fauré’s cadenza for the first movement, which dutifully bases itself on Mozart’s themes but can’t resist clothing them in entirely Fauréan harmonies.

There has long been disagreement about what sort of tempo Mozart had in mind for the Larghetto: the players here opt for a relatively fast reading and they clearly believe in it, with a litheness of phrasing and good sense of line. Brendel and Goode are at the other end of the scale, interpretatively, both producing a graver effect; Andsnes, occupying a middle ground, seems to me to get it just right. In the variations that form the finale of this concerto I would have liked more vivid characterisation, and the final lurch into 6/8, while suavely done, perhaps lacks an underlying element of angst.

In the G major Concerto Leleux sets up the orchestral tutti to good effect, enjoying the mock-martial dotted rhythms, the tempo nicely judged. But once Le Sage joins the fray, I feel he’s trying to do too much with the music: the graceful theme is perhaps a little too self-consciously considered (from 3'21"); Maria João Pires, by comparison, is much simpler-sounding and there’s an impishness lurking just below the surface, a quality that the bassoon then picks up to fine effect. Their respective approaches to the first-movement cadenza are telling: Le Sage more given to rhapsodic musing, Pires playfully pert. Ironically, whereas the slow movement of K491 seemed too fast, this one is a little sluggish, characterful contributions from the woodwind notwithstanding. Things work better in the finale, in which Mozart conjures a theme with martial elements from the opening movement and whose ensuing variations are a veritable masterclass in pearlescent ease and a good helping of wit.