Putting this CD on ‘blind’, and not expecting a CD fill-up to this of all symphonies, the gently sustained opening chords of Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage greeted my ears like a prayer. Not that the heraldic motto that opens Hymn of Praise wouldn’t have been welcome, just that in my view Calm Sea is one of Mendelssohn’s most evocative pieces, second only to The Hebrides (which it occasionally resembles, ie at around 3’30” into tr 2), and Edward Gardner conducts a most sensitive performance, making light of the Allegro maestoso main body of the piece, the playing of the CBSO refreshingly spirited but fairly soft-grained.

Back in Mendelssohn’s day the Second Symphony enjoyed great success in Birmingham, to the extent that the finale’s Lutheran chorale ‘Nun danket alle Gott’ (‘Let all men praise the Lord’, as here) brought the audience to its feet. The problem with Mendelssohn’s Second Symphony (in reality his Fourth) is that in the wrong hands it can sound portentous; but here, because textures are kept transparent, overall dynamics relatively low-key – at least in the first three movements – and the tempos are constantly mobile, it sheds its Victorian drapery and becomes precisely what it is, an airborne ‘hymn of praise’. The anticipatory three-movement Sinfonia that has led so many to liken the work to Beethoven’s Ninth acts as a preparation for the great choral exclamation ‘All men, all things, all that has life and breath, sing to the Lord, Hallelujah…’, one of the most exhilarating moments in all of Mendelssohn, very well sung here though not especially exultant.

Turn to Thomas Fey with the Deutsche Kammerchor and the Heidelberg Symphony Orchestra, and the moment is marked with a greater sense of occasion though, come ‘Nun danket alle Gott’, Fey’s tempo is virtually half that chosen by Gardner. Jan Willem de Vriend’s recording also keeps to a low calorie count while holding fast the sense of awe that was surely part of Mendelssohn’s prompting inspiration. Mention should also be made of the Kammerchor Stuttgart and Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen under Frieder Bernius.

Gardner stresses what over the years we have come to consider the more purely Mendelssohnian attributes, Apollonian qualities such as lightness, line and overall beauty of form, hence the fact he holds the finale’s various sections together with great skill: there are no unseemly bumps as one leads to another and his vocal team is excellent, the sisters Mary and Sophie Bevan especially, not to mention the excellent chorus. Superb sound, too, the best place to sample being the thrilling seventh number of the finale, ‘The night is departing’, with its very audible organ. A fine production all round, certainly if you want the work sung in English, though for me Fey and de Vriend, whose versions are also in excellent sound, just about pip Gardner to the post, principally because of their marginally higher levels of engagement. Remember though that first-rate fill-up, almost worth the price of the disc alone.