Well over halfway through his cycle by now, Thomas Fey alights on two ‘London’ Symphonies, one from each of Haydn’s visits to the British capital. And while there may be less that’s new to say in these ever-popular later works than in some of the less well-known earlier ones, it remains clear that Fey has thought carefully about (nearly) every note and phrase. It’s whether you the listener respond positively or negatively to his ideas and solutions that can often be the rub in his recordings.

Fey’s teachers, Bernstein and Harnoncourt, are perhaps the yin and yang of Haydn performance but their influence combines in readings that push for maximum individuality. So expect highly inflected phrasing, brash brass and elongated pauses; notice also how the brass- (and bass-) heavy sound picture underlines an almost Beethovenian impulse to the symphonic conception of No 98’s first movement. The slow movement, too, is swifter, Fey relishing the motivic working of the piece in preference to any sentimental notion that it was written on Haydn’s learning of Mozart’s death. The humour in the finale is (appropriately) of the beery, Austrian kind rather than the more urbane, genteel wit displayed elsewhere, and a tinkling fortepiano is reserved for the very end of the work.

The Drumroll, too, is dramatically conceived, from its opening tattoo (à la Harnoncourt and Minkowski) to a finale which is held back a touch to allow maximum contrast in tutti sections. Clarinets are a cheekily insolent presence in the three movements in which they are deployed, although the only movement in which they remain silent, the Andante’s variations, is the one section where Fey’s mind seems to wander off the point. Minuet speeds continue to surprise: that of No 98 is pushed forwards, while the Drumroll’s is kept at a Dorati-like slow allegretto. Repeated listenings have endeared this approach to me: it allows those all-important clarinets to make their maximum effect in the Trio. Where next for Fey and his Heidelbergers?