The results are impressive. The music is taken consistently up to speed, driven strongly but by no means inflexibly along, aided by passionate, purposeful, and expert playing from the Philharmonia. There are no concessions here to 'period' practice other than a properly antiphonal layout of the first and second violins, especially important at the start and finish of the Seventh Symphony, and a conscientious observation of the printed repeats. (The speculative internal repeat in the Scherzo of the Fifth Symphony is not included.) The recording, like the playing, is immediate and full-bodied. Used, as we increasingly are in this repertory, to smaller-scale ensembles and bright, lively recordings, this may all seem a touch claustrophobic at first, but we do hear a lot of inner detail.
In the final analysis, these performances are not so much radical-sounding as reassuring, the reassurance rooted in the fact that Zander has a view of the music which is wholly consistent with itself.'