It was a good idea to place together music for violin and orchestra by these three composers who, with Haydn, represent a Viennese tradition and were themselves string players, though I'm less convinced by Thomas Zehetmair's chosen order, beginning with Schubert and ending with Mozart, and would have preferred it the other way around.
Schubert's three pieces, composed before his twenty-first birthday, are conventional salon music, and the weight with which Zehetmair invests some of the orchestral part accords oddly with his rather sugary solo playing. Still, they are pleasing enough, and there are a few passages of characteristic Schubert, such as the G minor episode beginning at 2'33'' in the Polonaise, D580. The A major Rondo is the biggest and most rewarding, and gets a well integrated performance.
The two Beethoven Romances offer more substantial musical fare, and Zehetmair plays and directs them eloquently, with impeccable intonation in the double-stopped opening of the G major. These are attractive performances, with well chosen tempos and shapely phrasing, although once again the violinist is apt to prettify and over-project the music in places, such as the E minor section at 3'36'' in the G major work.
I enjoyed the Mozart playing best of all. It is delicate yet affectionate, and the Philharmonia offers more finesse than the players of the German orchestra in the other music. The recording of the pieces by Schubert and Beethoven is rather reverberant but has good detail and pleasing sound; that of the Mozart, made in The Maltings, Snape, is still better and admirably clean.'