It may be perverse to give pride of place to the ‘bonus’ feature. But anyone acquiring this DVD of Haydn’s pastoral idyll should begin with Eric Schulz’s riveting 25 minute documentary interleaving rehearsal footage (and the occasional shot of Salzburg) with Harnoncourt’s thoughts on The Seasons and on conducting Haydn. An astonishingly vital 83 year-old, Harnoncourt stresses the need to understand Haydn’s detailed rhetoric in order to avoid the unthinking routine that was all too common in Austria until recently. George Szell, with whom he played Haydn symphonies as a young cellist, comes under the cosh for his ‘machine-like’ performances. As Harnoncourt eloquently demonstrates in rehearsal, ‘the written notes are only the beginning’. Inter alia, we see him encouraging the naturally refined VPO horns to blare (‘schmettern’) raucously in the spectacular hunting chorus, and, in the ploughman’s song, getting the piccolo to play an octave higher than written to evoke the ‘whistling peasant’. As a sworn enemy of undifferentiated sostenuto, Harnoncourt is constantly urging chorus and orchestra to shade away, gradually or abruptly, on longer notes. In the process, the opening ‘passage of winter to spring’ becomes excitingly explosive, even at Harnoncourt’s characteristically broad tempo. The majestic fugal finale of ‘Spring’ becomes airier, more nuanced, while the chorus in praise of wine acquires an added lurching exuberance.

In rehearsal and interview Harnoncourt makes a (usually) convincing case for his trademark flexibility of tempo in Classical repertoire. Even so, in one or two movements – the love duet in ‘Autumn’ or Hanne’s faux naïf tale of country lass outsmarting randy lord – the fluctuations sound contrived rather than growing naturally from melodic and harmonic flux. In the main, though, this is a splendid, inspiriting performance of a life-giving work. It’s superbly executed by a 60 strong VPO, given a quasi-period makeover by Harnoncourt, and the elite of the Vienna State Opera Chorus, whose firm-toned sopranos are a world away from the fruity wobblers of old.

The soloists, though not quite the equal of those on Harnoncourt’s recent CD version, are all vivid performers. Florian Boesch is a robust, genial Simon in the earlier parts of the oratorio, then makes something dramatic of his sombre memento mori in ‘Winter’. Neither he nor tenor Michael Schade – hushed and fearful in his aria evoking the midday torpor – is ideally elegant in Haydn’s brief bouts of coloratura. Dorothea Röschmann sounds a shade too mature and sophisticated for Hanne, though her poised, shapely singing is always a pleasure per se.

Camerawork is intelligent and unfussy, always focusing on what you want to see; and while the balance isn’t always consistent, and the soloists are slightly too closely miked for my taste, hardly a note of Haydn’s teeming woodwind detail, not least his delicious bassoon-writing, escapes the ears of the engineers. Buy this, then, not only for a performance that does rich justice to Haydn’s bucolic masterpiece but also for Harnconcourt’s ever-stimulating thoughts, and some notably revealing and entertaining rehearsal footage.