Collectors of previous issues in Abbado’s Haydn series with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe will have a fair idea of what to expect here. As ever, the performances are scrupulously thought-through and superbly executed (the lightness and point of the strings’ articulation owing something to period performance). Again, though, Abbado’s sophisticated dynamic shadings and agogic hesitations are sometimes questionable, especially in No. 102. In the first movement, Haydn’s most trenchant and rebarbative, the main theme is emasculated by the finicky-sounding diminuendo from bar 28 (2'05''), and the music’s momentum undermined by the elongated pauses in the second subject (3'03'') and the rallentandos towards the end of the recapitulation. I liked Abbado’s stomping, explosive minuet (fortissimo brass volleys given their full value) though not his elephantine slowing at the final cadence (2'05''), or his lingering, romanticized trio. And while the finale is rhythmically razor-sharp, with the woodwind relishing their comic raillery, Abbado, like Harnoncourt with the Concertgebouw, underlines the joke when the first violins stutter part of the theme in slow motion near the end (4'01'') by making a further, unmarked ritardando: as both Sir Colin Davis and Norrington (in his bracing period-instrument reading) show, the effect is funnier when the passage is played straight.
Like Harnoncourt, too, Abbado opens No. 103 not with the usual drum-roll, but with an elaborate flourish: a prelude to a boldly featured performance which I enjoyed more consistently than that of No. 102. Here the sophisticated phrasing and touches of rubato rarely seem to go against the grain of the music. Perhaps some will find the trio, again taken much more slowly than the minuet, over-cossetted. But the Andante is ideally paced and vividly characterized: a lighter, more insouciant tread for the C major theme, for instance, a touch of whimsy in the solo violin variation (4'43'') and a real martial swagger in the ensuing tutti variation (6'44''). And Abbado is the only conductor to observe the distinction between piano and pianissimo in the coda. The two Allegros have a fine muscular energy (a nice teasing lilt, too, in the waltz-like second theme of the opening movement), with Abbado powerfully building and clinching the climaxes.
Both performances gain much from the conductor’s exceptionally sharp ear for balance (he never misses a trick with, say, a telling viola line, or an independent woodwind part in a tutti), enhanced by a recording that combines clarity and ambient warmth. Plenty, then, to savour here, especially in the Drumroll. But I would still direct anyone seeking these two symphonies to Sir Colin Davis, for his very Haydnish blend of refinement, wit and earthiness: and in case you haven’t noticed, the Philips two-disc set throws in four more late symphonies for exactly the same outlay as the new disc.'