Andrew Manze started his music career as a baroque violinist with the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra & Choir, and then the Academy of Ancient Music and the English Concert. Only later he started dabbling in more ancient repertoires, ranging from romanticism to modern partitions, conducting non-baroque classical orchestras. As the head of the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra, he gives us a profoundly delicate and transparent interpretation, with great care given to respect Mendelssohn’s partition, highlighting countless little details. The listener will no doubt feel like he’s hearing Mendelssohn’s Italian for the first time, or at least believe he’s discovering a long-forgotten original version: but no, it is exactly the partition as we know it, or at least as we thought we knew. As for the Symphony “Reformation”, it is here more designed like a fine and beautiful orchestral score rather than an unpalatable reformed mammoth. © SM/Qobuz