A new label, a newish period-instruments orchestra that has already done some exciting things under a variety of conductors, a conductor noted for the freshness of his music-making and his forensic musicology, and a work that has always been a bit of an enigma, elusive to the grasp of many a distinguished maestro. It is an attractive agenda.
In reality, there is not a great deal that is new or revelatory about the performance. Mackerras is not the first conductor to notice that the autograph has an alla breve marking at the start of the symphony, making for a swift prelude merging effortlessly with the ensuing allegro. And he is not the first conductor to record the work with all the repeats though to judge by his amusing remarks in April's Gramophone (''with all the repeats, of course, God help us!''—page 1398) he is not 100 per cent sold on the idea. It certainly makes for a very long haul with music that can easily come to seem repetitive (''a more exasperatingly brainless composition was never put on paper'': Shaw's famous sally is quoted by Bayan Northcott in his note). The huge exposition repeats in the outer movements certainly make it more difficult for the orchestra to keep the whole thing on an even keel in a piece which can lose its way if the tempo arbitrarily slackens or presses forward at any point.
On some details, the endlesss diminuendo-like marks in the score, for instance, Mackerras remains honestly baffled. ''After study of the autograph, I, in common with Schubert scholars, remain as baffled as before!'' he writes in his short sleeve-note. In practice, he sees no point in ending the symphony with a diminuendo as some conductors have thought it apt to do (Klemperer, for example, but not Boult whose glorious EMI account is just out on CD— CDM7 69199-2, 4/88). Generally, Mackerras plays the whole symphony very straight: rather too straight, possibly, given the work's Austro-Hungarian rhythmic and melodic gait and Sir Charles's known expertise in pacing and shaping music from the Viennese hinterland.
It is good to hear the cellos, basses and oboe at the start of the Andante giving the music a Haydnish feel, and there is much pleasure to be had from the period brass—lighter, open-sounding trombones, natural horns, buoyant trumpets which gives the music a certain pre-Wagnerian innocence without any substantial loss of power. Violins and woodwinds make a paler impression; conductors who see the work as belonging to a German tradition that goes back through Beethoven's Seventh Symphony to the daemonic power of Mozart's Don Giovanni usually take pains to help fiddles and woodwinds 'tell' rather more obviously than they do here.
The recording gives the brass clarity and bloom and the woodwinds are nicely placed, the strings though, seem tonally vapid at times, even on CD. It is, of course, damnably difficult music for them and I suspect that they could have done with more time to acclimatize to the music as well as a slightly more sympathetic recorded balance. That said, they stay gamely with the music, even in the 15 minute finale which is sprightly and invigorating from start to finish.'