CDs / DVDs

Gramophone (GB), 01. August 1993
...The performers understand better. By playing up the wild, demonic elements in the music, Hartmut Haenchen gives it a compelling originality that mighthave made the embarrassed composer think again. It emerges as a striking piece, raw but with a freshness and verve that need no apology. I have never been so impressed by it.
Haenchen also stresses the romanticism in Mendelssohn's early symphony, which the players tackle with similar exuberance. They are a splendid ensemble, with the unanimity that springs not merely from technical exactness but from a shared perception of the music. The Italian Serenade is more lightly played, and suitably recorded with a slightly different acoustic; and the Siegfried Idyll is played less as an orchestral showpiece than as chamber music, as if on that first morning on the wide stairs of Wagner's house at Tribschen.
J.W.