Mozart’s last two symphonies were composed virtually simultaneously in 1788 and make a common coupling on disc. Few recordings, though, differentiate their contrasting sound worlds as acutely as this one. Unlike the symphonies of, say, Beethoven, Mozart’s are products of a lifetime’s work in opera, both serious and comic, and sacred music on both the large and small scale, and these aspects bubble to the surface in the anguished Sturm und Drang of the G minor (No 40) and the Jupiter’s progress from Burgtheater to Stephansdom.

Given his long career as an exponent of historical performance practice, Andrew Manze comes at this music as if from within, dispalying a natural sensitivity to effect and Affekt. Speeds are judiciously chosen and are never outlandish: you will have to search elsewhere for performances that motor through these symphonies with vim and virtuoso vigour. A case in point is in the two minuets, the G minor a touch faster than the C major, its tensile piling-on of suspensions thereby pointedly contrasted with the majesty of its trumpet-laden brother.

Manze prizes clarity, too, and the recording he has been given enables him to differentiate within and between families, so woodwind are heard only occasionally as a block and more often as colouring, shading or sustaining instruments. Their buffo solos in the Jupiter are delicious, and the juiciness of clarinets in the revised version of the G minor adds piquancy in exposed passages (the first movement’s second subject) and plaintiveness in the wailing counterthemes that blow in over the outer movements’ contrapuntal workings. Points are made subtly, with minute gradations of dynamic (notably in No 41’s Trio) or by gentle tugs at the pulse (No 40’s first-movement development). And a generous quote of repeats conspires to make that miraculous Jupiter coda come as the surprise interruption it always should – like the closing presto of the Appassionata or the choral entry of Mahler’s Resurrection. No fireworks, just music-making of the highest standard, that you’d never guess was taken from concert performances.