CLASSICAL
Bavarian Radio Orchestra:
Haydn's Symphonies Nos. 100 and 104 plus Sinfonia concertante, Mariss Jansons conducting (Sony)
Cherubini's "Missa Solemnis in E," Riccardo Muti conducting (EMI)
Schumann's "Das Paradies und die Peri," Nikolaus Harnoncourt conducting (RCA)
The Bavarian Radio Orchestra is a high-personality ensemble with a sweet, compact sound. Its hallmark is giving the conductor and music at hand everything they might need. And it is the group to which great conductors take their more unorthodox recording projects.
Mariss Jansons emerges as a superb Haydn interpreter -- who knew, with all the splashy stuff he records with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam? -- in stylish performances that take into account historic performance practices, but never slavishly, always integrated into his magnetic personality.
Luigi Cherubini is one of several often-marginalized composers championed by Riccardo Muti, who gives a trim, vital, surprisingly convincing performance of the composer's celebratory "Missa Solemnis."
But the crown of the orchestra's recent discography is Nikolaus Harnoncourt's outing with Schumann's increasingly popular "Das Paradies und die Peri." This music can seem nonspecifically pretty, but not with the Chorus of the Bavarian Radio responding to Harnoncourt as if each individual were responsible for the performance's success. Ditto for the orchestra, which seems happy to frame the chorus and solo vocalists while revealing the layers of Schumann's sometimes-problematic orchestration.
