Lobgesang, Mendelssohn's ''Hymn of Praise'', is no longer a rarity on disc, with a dozen versions listed. That makes it timely that Spering, following up the success of Herreweghe's Harmonia Mundi version of Elijah (4/94), here presents a performance in period style. When the composer's preference for fast speeds is well documented, and has so convincingly been followed up by his latterday successor at the Leipzig Gewandhaus, Kurt Masur, it is perhaps surprising that Spering is far more relaxed in his choice of tempos. His overall timing—64'48'' as against Masur's 58'32''—shows what a wide discrepancy there is, and in no way does he let the music drag or become sentimental. For with clean, crisp textures this is a most refreshing performance, full of incidental beauties, of a work that for several generations was regarded as too sweet on the one hand, over-inflated on the other. Spering's clean directness and his obvious affection for the music reverses that jaundiced judgement.
In the main Allegro of the first movement as well as in the opening section of the big choral cantata-finale, Spering's speeds are actually faster than Masur's and similarly refreshing. The rest is different, not just slower in its speeds, but more relaxed and often more affectionate. I have never heard the duet for the two soprano soloists, ''Ich harrete des Herrn'' (''I waited on the Lord''), sound quite so beautiful, with Soile Isokoski (also in Herreweghe's Elijah) and Mechthild Bach both angelically sweet yet nicely contrasted.
The tenor soloist too, Frieder Lang, is exceptionally sweet-toned, reminding me at times of Ian Partridge in his honeyed lyricism. His projection is then keen enough to make the ''Huter, ist die Nacht bald hin?'' (''Watchman, what of the night?'') episode very intense and dramatic. The chorus, as recorded in a warm acoustic, is not always ideally clear in inner definition, but the freshness of the singing matches that of the whole performance. Anyone attracted by the advance of period performance into the nineteenth-century repertory should certainly not miss this, nor for that matter, anyone who has been dismissing this choral symphony. It may not live up to the ambition of following in the tracks of Beethoven's Ninth, but as Spering among others shows, it has much charm and strength.'