Mixed collections of overtures have become quite a rarity on new CDs and there is much to admire in this one from Christian Thielemann, not least the refinement of the Vienna Philharmonic’s playing. These are performances of extremes, not only in the range of dynamic – arguably too much for comfortable home listening – but also in contrasts of tempo.

That works very well in the opening item, Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, where the lightness of the fairy music is a delight. The slight reservation is that Bottom’s hee-haws are taken so literally that all humour is lost. And at the end of the well-paced Hebrides Overture the final string pizzicati are so literally in tempo that there is no sense of a pay-off.

Weber’s Euryanthe brings such extremes of tempo that the slow sections, for all their refinement, tend to stagnate and the Allegros are so fast they sound breathless. Oberon fares better, with more fairy music beautifully refined, though again the great central melody does not flow as easily as it might. The Nicolai brings an Allegro so fast and fierce it spoils the piece’s amiability. In Wagner’s Rienzi Thielemann’s weighty treatment brings out links to later Wagner, the great noble melody beautifully moulded and the military rhythms of the main Allegro well-pointed.

Next to these masterly overtures, Marschner’s Hans Heiling falls short, interesting as it is as a rarity, and Thielemann’s high-powered treatment tends to underline the relative thinness of invention.

Throughout the disc, the playing of the Vienna Philharmonic, recorded in the Musikverein, is a delight, even if inner clarity is limited in some heavier tuttis.