Michael Collins and the Philharmonia here kick off their projected Mozart symphony cycle in splendid style: three joyful, extrovert works from the early 1780s, performed with mingled refinement and élan, and caught in clear, glowing BIS sound. In each of these symphonies Mozart infuses traditional C and D major ceremony with his trademark chromatic subtlety and feeling for chiaroscuro. Setting out their stall, Collins and what sounds like a slimmed-down Philharmonia launch No 34 with a brazen swagger, martial trumpets pealing through the texture. Yet they are always alive to the music’s shadows, whether in the drooping bassoon counterpoint to the second theme or the mysterious, questioning development. Collins encourages light string articulation, divides his violins left and right, and is always careful over the shaping of inner detail. Nothing sounds routine.

The fast movements of the Haffner and Linz are just as exhilarating. Mozart insisted that the Haffner’s opening Allegro should go ‘with real fire’. Collins and his players take him at his word in a performance of bristling attack and coursing rhythmic energy. Divisi violins pay crucial dividends in the complex contrapuntal textures, while, again, the moments of lyrical reflection are given their full due: the gracefully interlocking violins in the second theme, or the poignant exchanges between oboe and bassoon over violin imitations and sustained violas before the recapitulation (from 3'11") – an exquisite texture, beautifully realised here.

Balancing ceremonial grandeur and athletic grace, the first movement of the Linz likewise goes with an invigorating swing. There is brassy exuberance aplenty, here and in the scintillating finale. Yet you’re also uncommonly aware how much the oboes and, especially, bassoons contribute to the music’s piquancy, most obviously in the piercing chromatic sequence near the end of the finale’s exposition (from 1'19").

As a poetic exponent of Mozart’s music for clarinet, Collins, unsurprisingly, shapes all three slow movements with a natural feeling for Mozartian line. His flowing tempos sound spot on. Apparently ‘neutral’ inner parts always sound vital. Eloquently as they phrase, the strings play rather too robustly in No 34’s Andante di molto. Mozart’s prescribed sotto voce surely implies a more intimate sound world than we get here. But the serenading Andante of the Haffner – music for a Salzburg summer’s night – has a smiling, untroubled ease, while the 6/8 Andante of the Linz, coloured by bassoons and soft trumpets and drums, unfolds as a gracefully swaying two-in-a-bar siciliano. The music both sings and dances. (Until quite recently, conductors typically slowed and solemnised this movement, following the Adagio marking in corrupt 19th-century editions.)

Despite a minor reservation about the Andante I can’t think of a more enjoyable performance of No 34, on period or modern instruments. In the two named symphonies Charles Mackerras and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra (Linn, 4/10) have long been a benchmark, with good reason. Except for the minuets, where Mackerras is brusquer and brisker (his Linz Minuet becomes a proto-waltz), his and Collins’s tempos are virtually identical. Using natural horns and trumpets, and (to my ears) a smaller body of strings, Mackerras cultivates a more acerbic, ‘period’ sonority than Collins, whose songful phrasing is a consistent delight on this new disc. I wouldn’t want to be without either version. After the finale of No 34, Collins and the Philharmonia offer the Minuet K409, sometimes assumed, without evidence, to have been inserted when Mozart revived the symphony in Vienna. Its scoring alone, with added flutes, makes the association unlikely. But with a performance as elegantly tailored as this, who cares?