The conjunction of the words “Mozart” and “René Jacobs” on the cover give an idea of what to expect: deep understanding, individual interpretations, vivacious performances and, for the most part, a playful approach to this music. What you also hear is a particular sensitivity to the exquisite layering of Mozart’s scoring. The sound here is more string-centred than has been the fashion among recent period-instrument recordings but without the important woodwind parts being subsumed; attention has especially been paid to the placing of the brass parts, the many colours available from valveless horns and trumpets being treated as an integral part of the dialogue rather than being relegated to their more usual sustaining or punctuating role.

What will most likely make up listeners’ minds is Jacobs’s interventionist approach. Slight phrase distensions and imposed dynamics add up to an avowedly personal reading of these two immortal symphonies – part of Mozart’s response to the gauntlet thrown down by Haydn in his “Paris” Symphonies – without by and large disrupting their flow (with the exception of a couple of fatal hiatuses in No 40’s finale). Nevertheless, Jacobs is careful not to do the same thing twice, so each repeat (all are taken) offers a fresh look at the music. I’m not sure I like his delivery of the punchline that rounds off the finale of No 39, and the severity of the brisk minuets is more appropriate to the G minor than it is to the E flat, whose Trio is unforgivably stripped of its essential whimsy. The slow movements, though, are simply ravishing, and contribute to a recording that is thought-provoking and always compelling.