Level-headed, unfussy conducting, backed by sophisticated orchestral playing and engineering. However, there's most assuredly more to these masterpieces than Marriner and his Academy deliver here. Low on incident and personable charm, this Pastoral is a curiously tepid, anodyne affair, with a particularly laboured ''Scene by the brook''—just listen to the unforced, infinitely more poetic response Tennstedt (EMI) draws from the LPO in this same movement.
The Eighth fares marginally better, but again there's little to commend a traversal of such plain-faced efficiency. No, for this particular coupling at mid-price, Tennstedt's far more characterful pairing is vastly preferable. On a budget-priced Headline CD, Decca have also recently re-coupled Schmidt-Isserstedt's mid-1960s VPO accounts of these two symphonies: true, the Pastoral is rather unsmiling, but its partner possesses a certain weighty eclat which is most enjoyable.'