Mozart: Symphonies Nos 39 & 40

Though the later performances in his cycle of the operas have had their contentious aspects, René Jacobs's credentials as a Mozart interpreter are impeccable, and his recordings of the Prague and Jupiter Symphonies issued last year were widely admired. The new accounts of the E flat and G minor symphonies are refreshingly fresh of mannerisms, with only a few details that might raise purist hackles. The tempi are generally on the fast side, but it is only in the minuet of No 39 that things are pushed a little too hard. But this miscalculation is soon forgotten when Jacobs follows it with such a wonderfully fleet account of the finale, with the Freiburg Baroque players conjuring up textures of almost Mendelssohnian deftness. Much of the G minor symphony is surprisingly conventional, although there are occasional hesitations – as if putting a phrase in quotation marks – that might seem mannered on repeated hearing, while a few instances of rather slithery phrasing are hard to justify. But anyone who wants highly energised, period-instrument accounts of these two great works won't go far wrong with these.