These performances directed by Kuijken have many of the qualities that made his set of the Haydn "Paris" Symphonies, also on Virgin, so winning. That was quite a breakthrough in the recording of these works on period instruments, making me eager for many more discs of Haydn from him. Yet with a gap of two years and a change of players from the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment to Kuijken's own group, La Petite Bande, come differences which weigh significantly against the new issue. His preference for very measured speeds in slow movements leads him to at least one serious miscalculation.

It is hardly surprising that the Largo of No. 88, one of the loveliest slow movements that Haydn ever wrote, should encourage expansive treatment, but Kuijken makes it far too heavy, seriously holding up the flow of the great melody with overemphasis and exaggerated pauses, all made the more obtrusive without continuo. It is quite a lesson to find that without continuo yet with authentically detached string-style, plus ponderous accentuation, this sounds even slower than such a modern-style performer as Bernstein (DG), who at a similar speed at least makes the melody soar. The extreme contrast of timing with Dorati's middle-of-the-road modern-instrument performance (Decca—part of a four-disc set) is also significant—5'38" against Kuijken's 7'00"—and Dorati is notably less expansive too in the other slow movements.