Do you remember the news story a couple of months ago in which a well-meaning parishioner decided to ‘restore’ a fresco of Jesus Christ in a Spanish church? It ended up bearing more of a resemblance to hairy ’80s DJ Dave Lee Travis than to Our Lord and Saviour. Thomas Fey has done a similar sort of thing to another miraculous work of art, Haydn’s antepenultimate ‘London’ Symphony. His Heidelbergers bring all their lustrous string tone to the almost Parsifalian opening string chorale of Symphony No 102 but Fey’s instinct is to meddle: the accented unisons that punctuate the Allegro are treated as pauses, upsetting the music’s flow, while the Minuet is disastrously rushed (and its Trio taken ludicrously slowly). If the slow movement, with its gorgeous cello cantilena, and the scampering finale go with less troubling incident, it’s not enough to save the performance. That Spanish lady destroyed a unique work of art but thankfully other 102s are, of course, available: I never tire of recommending Colin Davis’s Concertgebouw ‘London’ cycle but do also hear Marc Minkowski’s set, to which I return again and again with increasing satisfaction.

Symphony No 89 is the Cinderella of the late symphonies, overshadowed by the far better known No 88. It’s not without its challenges, largely met by Fey, notably a convincing solution to the mysterious marking strascinando (‘dragging’) in the finale. A swift siciliano second movement, with an attendant and unnecessary speeding-up for its minore section, may raise eyebrows but this is a far more persuasive performance; a Sinfonia concertante featuring some notably fine wind-playing makes this instalment of Fey’s Haydn cycle something of a curate’s egg.

His return to the very beginning with a disc of four of the earliest symphonies is a far better bet. Tempi again are extreme: Symphony No 1’s opening movement works remarkably well at such a lick but the opening Adagio of the sinfonia da chiesa No 5 or the Andante of No 10 may seem too drawn-out for some. Haydnistas will need to know that a harpsichord is deployed but is mercifully absent from central slow movements; the best of these is the unsettling Nachtmusik at the heart of Symphony No 4. If you don’t mind a couple of provocative tempi and some over-enthusiastic elaborations on repeats (going way beyond ‘discreet ornamentation’), then this could represent a useful alternative to Adam Fischer’s Nimbus set in these early works.