There have been a number of fresh and thought-provoking recent recordings of Mendelssohn’s orchestral works, including symphonies and concertos from Edward Gardner and the CBSO, Thomas Dausgaard’s disc of the Midsummer Night’s Dream music, and the ongoing series on period instruments from Pablo-Heras Casado and the Freiburger Barockorchester. But this cycle of the symphonies, taken from concerts in the Paris Philharmonie in February last year, is not among them.
Technically, the performances are immaculate. As you would expect, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe plays with all its usual precision and finesse for Yannick Nézet-Séguin, and there is plenty to admire in the technical brilliance of many passages – the clarity of the wind articulation in the finale of the Third Symphony, the Italian, for instance, or the transparency with which the strings unfold the Desden Amen theme in the slow introduction to the Fifth, the Reformation.
But Nézet-Séguin adds little to that sheen, other than occasionally pushing the music just a little too fast. The finale of the Italian Symphony just seems glib at the tempo he chooses, and in the Second Symphony, the Hymn of Praise, a hybrid work, part symphony, part cantata that really does need a bit of extra care and attention, he shows very little.
