‘The most limpid and lyrical music in existence’ was Eric Blom’s verdict on Symphony No 39 in his Master Musicians Mozart biography. Older conductors, from Beecham and Böhm to Neville Marriner, evidently agreed. Not so Riccardo Minasi. From the splenetically tumbling scales and omninously pounding timpani of the not-so-slow introduction, he and his expert 35 strong band (modern instruments, period ethos) play up the music’s disruptive aspects for all their worth. With lean, vibrato-light strings and assertive wind and brass, tutti textures have an abrasive clarity. Of the mellowness usually associated with E flat there is barely a trace.

There are exciting things here: the uncommonly rebarbative minor-key outbursts in the Andante, high-pitched woodwind and horns screeching against scything strings, or the raucous, even aggressive exuberance of the finale (Minasi’s Mozart never smiles). What irritates, even more so on repeated hearings, is Minasi’s penchant for tempo manipulation, his reluctance to let the music flow. Think Harnoncourt, and then add some. The agogic hesitations in the first movement’s lyrical second theme (further exaggerated on the repeat) sound enervating, even more so by contrast with the furiously accented tuttis. ‘No!’ was my instant reaction to the Minuet, and I stick to it. This least complicated movement in these late symphonies should have a lusty bucolic vigour tempered by Mozart’s innate grace. With barely four bars played in the same tempo, the effect here is hobbled and precious.

The G minor and Jupiter symphonies provoked similar mixed reactions. In both finales Minasi builds rhythmic and harmonic tension over long spans, and secures playing of thrilling precision and attack from the band. You’d go far to hear the finale of No 40 played with such controlled fury. The dizzying contrapuntal imbroglios in the Jupiter finale have an ideal lucidity; and as you might by now expect, Minasi rams home the (by 18th-century standards) excruciating dissonances when Mozart violently deconstructs the opening theme in the recapitulation (from bar 233).

As in the Andante of No 39, there is much delicate – and beautifully balanced – woodwind-playing in the slow movements. Again, though, Minasi can’t resist self-conscious-sounding manipulations of pulse and dynamics, whether in the extreme tempo variations in the first movement of No 40 (the lyrical second theme seems mesmerised at its own beauty), the Andante’s drifts into dazed reverie or a queasy-sounding Minuet that loses impetus at the end of each phrase. The opening of the Jupiter rather sums it up: intemperate rather than majestic fanfares, an elongated rest and an indulgently distended piano answer that out-Harnoncourts Harnoncourt. Mozart’s carefully calibrated symmetries, not for the only time, go by the board. No one is likely to be indifferent to these performances. Whether you find them revelatory, uncomfortably provocative or simply exasperating is your call.