Sir Charles’s ‘discovery’ of the autograph score’s alla breve marking for the Ninth Symphony’s introduction and his other textual concerns were printed in the booklet for his ten-year-old pioneering period-instrument recording with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment (Virgin, 6/88 – nla), as again they are here. Thus, once more, we have a swift Andante introduction leading effortlessly into the ensuing Allegro (that is, at the same pulse; no traditional acceleration necessary). Sir Charles also went on to record the Unfinished Symphony (in Brian Newbould’s completion, Virgin, 9/92) with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. So, apart from the two symphonies now being on one disc (with most of the repeats), what, one might ask, is new?
The Scottish Chamber Orchestra’s instrumental make-up for these new recordings – period brass, modern everything else, and a smallish-sounding complement of strings with separated violin sections – allows all the textural yield of the OAE recordings, but Mackerras is now both a more faithful and more wilful interpreter; faithful, for example, in such matters as commanding a proper pianissimo in the Eighth’s famous first-movement second subject, wilful in an almost Mengelberg-like speeding towards the central crisis in the second movement of the Ninth. In short, here are all the nuances of tempo and dynamics in performances which, though hardly suggesting a switch to a ‘post-Wagnerian’ viewpoint, provide a great deal more than mere textual, textural and timbral interest: they engage on an expressive level. One might stand on the soap-box and claim the use of vibrato by strings and woodwinds is ‘inauthentic’, but there is no denying its effectiveness in so many places, not the least of them being the start of the first-movement development of the Eighth (the tremors of fear!). And, in any case, these days, most of us would seem to prefer a pragmatic rather than dogmatic application of ‘historical’ performance practice.
Ultimately, how these performances ‘add up’ in the company of distinguished alternatives past and present will still depend on whether you take to the specific nature of the instrumental sound (whether it is an effective carrier for what you want to hear from both symphonies). It is lightweight and small-scale, with the cutting edge of the period brass, although used more selectively than in the OAE recordings, remaining a powerful feature. And if the orchestra isn’t quite the Chamber Orchestra of Europe (under Abbado), general ensemble is very fine, and the quality of woodwind solos outstanding. Telarc’s recording naturally reproduces what is there.'