Mendelssohn: Italian Symphony (two versions); Reformation Symphony. VPO/John Eliot Gardiner (DG)

This is a genuinely revelatory disc. Firstly there's the felicitous ease with which Gardiner makes Mendelssohn's fast movements skip and dance. Yet at the same time he's able to invest the counterpoint with a productive friction which saves the composer from the potential glibness of his own astonishing facility. The Vienna Philharmonic, in spite of sometimes cramped recorded sound, plays with captivating alertness.

But the real revelations come from Mendelssohn himself, in the recorded premiere of virtually unknown revisions he carried out to all but the first movement of the Italian Symphony. Interesting detail is frequently dropped in alterations which consistently favour blandness over tension. Shocking!

By Michael Dervan