For reasons that evade easy understanding, EMI re-released
Franz Welser-Möst's early-'90s recordings of pairs of symphonies by
Schumann and
Mendelssohn in 2008. Neither coupling was especially well regarded in its time, and the
Mendelssohn pair was reissued as recently as 2001, making its re-reissue seven years later redundant. Still, for those listeners who missed them before, here they are again.
Unfortunately, time has not improved them. Then at the start of his international career,
Welser-Möst was a capable technician who favored brisk tempos and bright colors over cogent developments and emotional drama, and his performances here are efficient without being effective. In
Schumann's Second and Third symphonies,
Welser-Möst takes the
London Philharmonic on a lightning tour of German Romanticism with cursory stops at charm, fantasy, and sentiment. In
Mendelssohn's "Scottish" and "Italian" symphonies,
Welser-Möst and the same orchestra see the sights and sample the cuisine but never linger long enough to really get a feel for the country. With dozens of better recordings of these works available -- try
Szell or
Sawallisch's
Schumann or
Abbado or
Maag's
Mendelssohn -- these are hard to recommend except to
Welser-Möst's fans. EMI's early digital sound is lean, light, and wholly without a sense of time or place.