Edward Gardner and his City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra gained wide attention for their performances of the symphonies of Mendelssohn, who graced the city's Town Hall with his presence, and the musicians' new cycle of Schubert symphonies, performed in the same venue (although Schubert was long gone before Town Hall came along), promises more wonderful things. This recording of the Symphony No. 2 in B flat major, D. 125, by the 17-year-old Schubert, and the Symphony No. 6 in C major, D. 589 ("Little C major), is impressive in its overall approach, catching the Mozartian quality of the Symphony No. 2 and the tension with Beethoven in the Symphony No. 6, where the third-movement Scherzo uses the Beethoven short-short-short-long motif only to top it with a fourth movement that breaks open new formal dimensions. However, it's the slow movements, delicate to the point of being wispy, that truly astonish. It's true that what Gardner and the CBSO accomplish here wouldn't correspond to what Schubert's audiences heard; these are modern strings that blend in a modern way, but unless you are a historical-performance purist, it won't matter. The quieter passages seem to exist at the graceful point next to nonbeing, and the performers get superb support from Chandos' engineers. Two enjoyable Italian overtures round out the program, and the sole complaint here is that they might have better been deployed as a curtain-raiser and an intermezzo. At the end, they are a slight letdown, for this recording of Symphony No. 6 is a very hard act indeed to follow.
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