This record comes with an immaculate pedigree—an orchestra that has won itself the highest possible reputation for the performance of early nineteenth-century music (despite its title), a conductor with a justly admired reputation for the energy and clarity of his performances and his sound scholarly understanding, and a new company that has won itself an enviable position very quickly indeed. It is no pleasure, then, to have to register disappointment. In the first movement of the symphony, the rhythms are very harddriven, with an atmosphere of great nervous tension but little of the exhilaration at the first encounter with Italy which Mendelssohn is here recording. The pilgrims are also kept moving at a disconcertingly brisk pace, with none of the gravity and steadiness which their march embodies (Mendelssohn's letters home from Italy, long overdue for a modern translation, give a vivid account of what he certainly had in mind). The finale is again extremely hard-driven, to the point at which some of the players find accurate articulation a problem; and the recording engineers do not always pick up effectively the whirling string figuration. The actual sound here is very attractive, as the softer tones of the violins in particular lead the string ensemble; but there is a loss of the brightness that would doubtless help to make the rapid triplets and other details clearer. This speed is surely not necessary for the brightness and gaiety of the Saltarello; a lighter touch would have made more.
Similar considerations apply to some of the Midsummer Night's Dream excerpts. The Overture is a little fierce, and though it is good to hear the boom of the ophicleide for poor bully Bottom, some of the phrasing is a little snatched. The ''Intermezzo'', marked allegro appassionato, is not always included in selections of the Incidental Music, and is a superb piece, here played with a tension that it urgently needs (whether or not Mendelssohn was in a position to re-create a phrase of Weber's Oberon mermaids in the Overture, he was surely remembering the opera's opening aria when he wrote this). The horns of the ''Nocturne'' sound beautiful. The Scherzo is again a little scrambled. The ''Wedding March'', on the other hand, is played with a bite and a freshness that give it new life. It is good to hear several more of the numbers which normally elude concert selection. But I wish very much that it were in general possible to be more welcoming to such a good idea for a record.'