No work of Mendelssohn has soared so high and sunk so low as this symphony-cantata composed for the Leipzig celebrations to mark the 400th anniversary of Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press with movable type. What the early Victorians heard as noble and uplifting gradually came to seem by turns grandiloquent and complacent. Reflecting the general rise in Mendelssohn’s stock in recent years, the Hymn of Praise can now be enjoyed, in a lively and sympathetic performance, for its stirring choruses that unashamedly proclaim their debt to Handel, its distinctive vein of lyricism that mingles innocence and poignancy, and for the thrilling drama of the dialogue with the Watchman.

A prime challenge in this work is finding a balance between ceremonial dignity and that urgent forward momentum crucial to the composer. Jun Märkl’s very smart tempo for the opening brass motto, con moto with a vengeance, suggests that this is going to be a performance in the mould of those by Andrew Litton and Thomas Fey. The nimble, eager Allegro, shorn of any hint of pomposity, bears this out, though Märkl is more romantically flexible than his rivals in the lyrical second theme. I was, though, less convinced by the other two instrumental movements: the delightful Allegretto, somewhere between a Venetian gondola song and a Tchaikovsky waltz, has a wistful charm but at Märkl’s ultra-relaxed tempo misses Mendelssohn’s prescribed un poco agitato, while the Adagio religioso is treated with a dangerous, Brucknerian expansiveness that only just avoids sentimentality. Phrasing in longer spans at tempi close to the composer’s swiftish metronome marking, both Litton and Fey preserve an essential Mendelssohnian innocence here.

Märkl is also slower than Litton and Fey in several of the vocal numbers, though, with sensitive shading, the idyllic chorus “All thee that cried unto the Lord in distress” arguably gains from the more reflective tempo. Elsewhere he shrewdly judges the balance between dignity and urgency, while the choral singing (with a notably incisive tenor line) is aptly full-blooded without compromising clarity in Mendelssohn’s fugal textures. Of the soloists, Christian Elsner, his tone poised between the lyric and heroic, sings in fine, forthright style, if without quite the imaginative subtlety of Christoph Prégardien for Litton. Ruth Ziesak’s voice has touching plangency, though her slight shrillness in alt makes her response to the tenor’s fearful “Will the night soon pass?” less ecstatically radiant than it can be (Fey’s Eleonore Marguerre is ideal here). Ziesak and Mojca Erdmann combine attractively in the famous, and oft-maligned, duet “I waited for the Lord”, which emerges with freshness and charm despite the leisurely tempo. While this would not be my first choice (Litton would get my vote, just, over Fey and the older recordings by Abbado on DG and Chailly on Philips), this new Leipzig performance, finely played and sung, and spaciously recorded, could win over many doubters to Mendelssohn’s splendid symphony-cum-cantata. At the Naxos price it’s a true bargain.