Like London buses, two recordings of Mozart Piano Quartets have appeared simultaneously. Joyce Yang leads three members of the Alexander Quartet while Daniel Barenboim teams up with three members (one his son Michael) of his West-Eastern Divan Orchestra. 

Both are comprehensively excellent, and both observe the first movement exposition repeat in both works, thankfully, making them hover around the 15-minute mark. In K478, Barenboim is certainly sterner than Yang in the grim opening motif and it takes longer in his team’s reading for the sunlight to eventually creep in, but both performances maintain the tension admirably, especially, Barenboim, where the anger of the opening is less appeased – and returns more ominously at the movement’s end. Both the subsequent...