Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, Nicholas McGegan - Haydn: Symphonies Nos. 57, 67 & 68 (2015) 

With all the shock-of-the-new performances coming from European historical-instrument ensembles, it's easy to forget that at one time Americans embraced this approach arguably more often than Europeans did, and to overlook the fine work being done by San Francisco's Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra under conductor Nicolas McGegan. The present release, in which the group delves into middle-period Haydn after a successful album drawn from the final 16, has much to recommend it. With more than 30 players, all using old instruments or copies of them, the fast movements feel fully powered. The balance among the winds, brasses, and strings if anything improves Haydn's humor and reveals new dimensions of it. Best of all, McGegan never lets theory and ideology get in the way of musicality; the slow movements are graceful indeed and, in the case of the Symphony No. 68 in B flat major, a bit sly, and for those who need an example of the album's joys, try the trio of the minuet of the Symphony No. 67 in F major, which here is rendered unexpected and even breathtaking. One might wish for a bit more crispness and edge in the difficult triplets and "clucks" of the Prestissimo finale of the Symphony No. 57 in D major, but there's an argument to be made that when Haydn conducted these works, they sounded a good deal like this. The live sound from Berkeley, California's First Congregational Church is adequate, but why do groups that are otherwise so punctilious about historical performance practice go and record music in a venue nothing like the ones where the music would originally have been heard?