You might not have expected John Eliot Gardiner, with his weighty and self-consciously spiritual
Bach recordings, to emerge as a conductor of the gossamer
Mendelssohn (with the possible exception of the neo-Baroque "Symphony No. 2 in B flat major, Op. 52 (Lobgesang)," which he has in fact done well with). Yet here it is: he has conducted major Mendelssohn works in concert with the
London Symphony Orchestra, with nary a historical instrument in sight, and one of those concerts, featuring the "Midsummer Night's Dream overture" and "incidental music," the most Mendelssohnian works of all, is offered here by the orchestra's own LSO Live label. And the results are more than satisfactory. The music on the album is taken from a single concert on February 16, 2016, with no editing or splicing involved, and it's at a consistently high level, even if the engineering pushes the strings a bit to the harsh side. This is rather muscular Mendelssohn that perhaps misses a certain spritely grace, but the shaping of the orchestra is first-rate. The hints of
Weber in the score come through unusually clearly, and the balance and control in the slower pieces (sample the gorgeous "Nocturne," track 7) are impressive indeed. Gardiner's
Monteverdi Choir sounds great, and the three young actors who perform the dialogue sections are well modulated to the project as a whole. Recommended.
