Vilde Frang is a brilliant arrival on the violin scene; it seems slightly odd to combine her piercing but heavily vibrato-laden sound with the period-instrument practices of Arcangelo. Her extrovert personality shines through in the rarely heard Mozart first violin concerto, a fizzy essay probably written by the 17-year-old composer in Salzburg for the violinist Antonio Brunetti. In the much darker and more mature Sinfonia Concertante, from only six years later, Frang is rather outshone by her partner on viola, Maxim Rysanov: they match well when playing together, but elsewhere he shows how to play each phrase with more depth and meaning as he echoes her. Jonathan Cohen’s direction makes the most of the breathtakingly original textures of this duo concerto.
