The teenage Mendelssohn laid down a gauntlet with his First Symphony (a decade earlier, Schubert had done the same with the Fourth): to seize the urgency of C minor without indulging Romantic anachronism or succumbing to the bluster of a precocious answer to Beethoven’s Fifth. Jörg Widmann meets the challenge with vigour and in some style. The overture-like gestures of the outer movements are swifter and more agile than his full-symphonic competitors, and the Irish Chamber Orchestra are more sweetly blended than the period-style Netherlands Symphony Orchestra. Having begun with a mellifluous pair of clarinets, the Andante moves on with a tension and seriousness of purpose that eludes recent and more placid recordings.

With a composer’s instinct for the telling idea, Widmann uncovers some magic in Mendelssohn’s transition back from hymn-like Trio to off-beat Minuet. However, few will buy a full-price disc for an underrated but nonetheless prentice symphony. Competition is stiffer in the Italian, which gets off to a short-winded and unsteady start, with uneven tuning between brass and vibrato-light strings. Widmann and his players also take time to find a solemn centre of gravity in the walking bass of the Andante. I enjoyed the contrast between the poised Minuet and lazy swing of the horns in the Trio, and the whirling finale is deftly done, but without the masked violence of the CBSO and Edward Gardner.

Ad absurdum would make an effective contrast in concert. A 15-minute trumpet concerto marked sempre prestissimo, it puts to the test the astonishing virtuosity of Sergei Nakariakov. Or does it send up a self-defeating obsession with virtuosity? I am not convinced that Widmann can have it both ways.