Mozart's early birthday presents

Deutsche Grammophon have got in early with the first instalment of its Mozart Forever project (the composer's 250th birthday isn't until January 27).

But who's complaining when the celebration has occasioned two superlative recordings of Mozart's violin music?

Anne-Sophie Mutter brings soignee glamour to a double CD of the complete concertos, with penetrating interpretations that complement music the violinist has described as an x-ray of your soul.

Conducting the London Philharmonic Orchestra behind her, Mutter takes little heed of book-bound authenticists and is not afraid to burst forth with the lushest of tone in slow movements (with breathtaking effect in the A major concerto).

She's happy to reduce the orchestral strings to quartet status at times, although some might find her choice of Joachim's bloated cadenzas a mite peculiar.

Her playing style is one of great determination, always tempered by an utterly Viennese grace.

The Presto from the B flat concerto is an invigorating delight, not so much because of its tempo but rather the sheer attack of the playing.

Alongside the five concertos is the Sinfonia Concertante in which violist Yuri Bashmet's sense of the playful is the perfect foil to Mutter's composure. Its Andante, with the soloists' subtle tonal shadings impeccably caught by the Deutsche Grammophon engineers, would bring tears to the eyes of Salieri.

The young Hilary Hahn and her pianist Natalie Zhu offer fresh and appropriately youthful accounts of four Mozart violin sonatas, mostly early pieces apart from the A major work of K 526, penned just before Don Giovanni.

Start with this late sonata, and submit to the spell of Hahn and Zhu winding Mozart's lines around you. Try, if you can, not to be totally bewitched by the strange power of just two melodic strands.

In this and the earlier pieces, it's the utter simplicity of the writing that is both challenge and reward; Hahn and Zhu understand it well, from the sighs and flutters of the F major Sonata to the sombre unison that opens the E minor.

While there's no question that four of the finest sonatas have been chosen, let's hope that Hahn and Zhu consider another selection to keep this one company.* Mozart, The Violin Concertos, with Anne-Sophie Mutter (Deutsche Grammophon 474 2152); Mozart, Violin Sonatas, with Hilary Hahn & Natalie Zhu (Deutsche Grammophon 477 5572)