Pleasant, direct performances of Haydn's last two symphonies, enjoyable up to a point. Despite the odd minor lapse, the playing of the Consort of London, on modern instruments, is neat and alert, with a vital, distinctive woodwind contribution. Violins are properly divided left and right, to particular effect in the antiphonal writing of No. 103's outer movements; and articulation and instrumental balance (wind well to the fore) betray the influence of period-instrument performances. That said, I can't say these performances significantly enriched my appreciation of either symphony. The Drumroll, especially, struck me as rather tame and under-characterized. The swiftish introduction lacks a real sense of ominous expectancy, of ''the mysteries of Hecate and the night'', while the ensuing Allegro con spirito, is deliberate and a touch dogged, with insufficient lift to the rhythms and a casual observance of Haydn's crucial sforzando accents. The slow movement is well paced, though, again, rhythms and accents are not pointed enough, to the detriment of the music's Slavonic astringency. If the finale doesn't blaze as it can in the finest performances (less reticent brass and timpani at key moments would have helped), Robert Haydon Clark gives a lucid, spirited reading and, unlike almost every other conductor on disc, he elects to play the movement in its longer, original version—i.e. with the comic-mysterious digression into C flat near the close which, surprisingly, Haydn later discarded.
Some of my provisos about the Drumroll apply to the London, though on the credit side tempos here are consistently well chosen, the first two movements nicely balancing spaciousness and a sense of forward momentum. The Andante is attentively, sympathetically phrased, and gains from the relative prominence of the wind, especially the bassoons. But the first-movement development fails to generate quite enough tension, while both the minuet and finale suffer from occasional carelessness over note values, especially the invariable clipping of the rest in bars 45 and 46 of the minuet (0'52'' etc). As a makeweight we also have the overture Haydn may have written for his unperformed London opera L'anima del filosofo, and probably later used for a 1795 production of Salomon's masque, Windsor Castle. It's an exhilarating, tautly argued little piece, acceptably performed here, even if I would have preferred a less cautious interpretation of Haydn's Presto marking. In fact caution is often a keynote of the two symphony performances, which ultimately fail to stand up in an increasingly competitive market. The recording, made in London's Henry Wood Hall, is clean and detailed if a shade dry.'