Harnoncourt’s approach to these teenage symphonies, most of them composed for Italy and characteristically Italianate in their easy buffo brilliance, is certainly never dull or routine. Always with an eye to dramatic and rhetorical effect, he plays up the music’s contrasts for all – sometimes more than – they’re worth. The opening Allegro of the G major, K74, is a typical case in point, with abrasive, stingingly accented tuttis, massive crescendos and an ultra-moulded, flexible treatment of the lyrical second theme (0'44''): the fiery Jacobin turns out to be a closet romantic after all.
Harnoncourt’s high adrenalin level and the raw, brazen sonorities he draws from his expert orchestra can be exciting, as in, say, the finales of K75 and K81, with their fierce rhythmic drive and rudely braying horns. And there is some delicate, tenderly shaped playing in the slow movements: in the Andantino of K75, for example, or the gracious Andante of K95, with its gentle flute colouring. But Harnoncourt’s penchant for extreme contrasts, his determination to draw the maximum theatrical or expressive potential from each phrase – nowhere more so than in the Minuet of K75, with its lurching tempo fluctuations – can too easily compromise the cheerful, uncomplicated openness of these early works. If you want these particular symphonies on a single disc and are attuned to the conductor’s highly interventionist approach, then you should find plenty to enjoy here. But most listeners will, I suspect, find Pinnock’s readings truer to the music’s spirit: no less lively, but more direct, naturally shaped and lighter on their feet.'