Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy:

Symphonies Nos. 3 and 5. Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra; Andrew Litton, conductor. BIS SACD-1604

(hybrid Super Audio CD)

Twin Cities concertgoers can encounter the talents of conductor Andrew Litton, Sommerfest's convivial artistic director, for a few weeks in July and a few days in midwinter. But Litton, when away from the Minnesota Orchestra's podium, is anything but idle. Since 2005 he's been music director of the Bergen (Norway) Philharmonic -- an ensemble that claims a 245-year history and numbers Edvard Grieg among its former directors.

Litton and his Bergen band have lately been recording for the Swedish BIS label, which also has been responsible for Osmo Vänskä's sets of the Sibelius and Beethoven symphonies. Their most recent release, coupling Mendelssohn's atmospheric Third ("Scottish") and his often-academic Fifth ("Reformation") symphonies, completes a three-disc traversal of the composer's mature symphonic output, occasioned by the 2009 bicentennial of his birth.

The performances are winning, in a temperate, uninflated sort of way. Litton clearly knows that Mendelssohn's orchestral sound world has more in common with Mozart's than with Wagner's; he eschews the massiveness and monumentality that conductors like Herbert von Karajan brought to this music. The slow openings of both symphonies are beautifully shaped, with wonderfully quiet and evocative playing; the fetching Vivace of the Third, while neither as fast nor as incisively articulated as I've heard it, has an infectious, gossamer lightness.

Balances tend to favor the strings; woodwinds, brass and even timpani can sound a bit recessed, at least on the two-channel SACD layer of the disc. The emphasis throughout is on warmth and color, rather than visceral impact. In short, this is sensitive, unnarcissistic music-making that does credit to all concerned.