The idea of pagans outwitting their Christian oppressors inspired Mendelssohn to pen some of his most mischievous musical invention: Berlioz was extremely impressed and the rumpus that erupts when Druid guards “come with prods and pitchforks” (track 8) matches the sailors’ choruses from The Flying Dutchman for visceral excitement. The lighter Mendelssohn has doughty men tiptoe through a woodland retreat to a Puckish scherzo while the closing ‘hymn to faith’ recalls the Second Symphony and Elijah. A few years ago, Harnoncourt stirred the cauldron with obvious relish, but Claus Peter Flor directs a softer-grained performance, notable above all for its delicacy, its warmth of texture, its excellent solo singing and the energetic drive of the big choruses. The Overture in particular shows Flor’s skill at creating a three-dimensional sound stage, shaping and blending, allowing due prominence to salient musical lines without spoiling the overall balance.
Harnoncourt’s CD also offers music from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but Flor’s delightful fill-ups are both more enterprising and, discographically speaking, more valuable. Eight delightful Lieder are interspersed with four of the Songs without Words, piquantly scored by Siegfried Matthus with especially imaginative use of harp and high percussion. “Spring Song” becomes an oboe solo; “May Breezes” is shared among solo strings and harp; No. 20 is passed to the solo horn (alluding unmistakably to A Midsummer Night’s Dream); “On Wings of Song” incorporates fluid harp writing, and “Traveller’s Song” restlessly shimmering strings (to fit the autumn wind). Deon van der Walt is the pleasingly mellifluous soloist and Flor is as considerate, authoritative and imaginative as he is in the main work. All in all, a super disc, beautifully engineered – though why on earth have RCA taken more than three-and-a-half years to issue it?
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