Although this is a debut recording by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra Wind Soloists, the six players each boast impressive individual track records. As part of the SCO itself, they previously made a recording of wind concerti by Weber, which in turn inspired the creation of the ensemble on this disc.

As the liner notes point out, throughout Mozart’s life, one constant was that he always wrote music for entertainment. Whether that music was designed to be played at parties or banquets, at evenings out or formal ceremonies, it’s abundantly clear that Mozart took all this good-natured music very seriously.

The recording opens with the Serenade in E Flat, K375. There’s a well-known letter to his father in which Mozart describes his delight at discovering the musicians performing the work beneath his window as a surprise one evening. Similarly, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra Wind Soloists present us as listeners with a pleasant surprise, as they (somewhat unusually) play the original version of this work for pairs of clarinets, horns and bassoons. Normally, the Serenade in E Flat features a pair of oboes as well, but clarinettists Maximiliano Martin and William Stafford produce some wonderfully shaded timbres, creating more than a strong argument...