Mozart loved playing with friends; so does Michael Collins. Mozart loved the clarinet; so does Michael Collins: it is his instrument, after all.

Appropriate, then, that Collins kicked off his "and Friends" season with Mozart, progressively filling the stage with each passing piece: from the Clarinet Trio nicknamed Kegelstatt to the Piano Quintet, then on to the Gran Partita, for 12 wind instruments and double bass.

It helped that Collins's friends are all virtuosos. In the Trio, his clarinet and the viola of his wife, Isabelle van Keulen, intertwined magically, and if Imogen Cooper's piano was occasionally overbearing, that is perhaps what Mozart wanted.

You want the four sweetest, saddest instruments? Try oboe, bassoon, horn and clarinet. Throw in a piano, and you have the Piano Quintet, an opera without voices. Finally, the Gran Partita, weighty but light as air.

Period instrument ensembles might achieve a grainier blend and sprightlier tempos, but this was 13 players breathing as one. Such performances make you wish Mozart's 250th birthday would last forever.

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