Schubert’s 9th Symphony, the “Great C Major,” always made a strong impression on me, but my recording of it disappeared about twelve years ago when Jon and I lost our CD collections to burglars. Last year I finally bought a replacement on the basis of a very positive review, but it proved disappointing. It was performed by a big orchestra with a perfectly blended sound. Given that Schubert employed a lot if repetition, the satiny quality of the sound made it downright soporific for me. I listened to it a couple of times, hoping to form an attachment, but couldn’t warm to it.

Recently, I turned the radio on in the middle of a performance that had me riveted at once. I’d never heard it before. It wasn’t the CD that had been stolen, which I must have liked, but don’t remember specifically. But it communicated exactly what makes me love this music. It turned out to be Charles Mackerras conducting the Scottish Chamber Orchestra.

My first thought, before knowing who was playing, was that this was a good example of an “early music” interpretation–or what is now referred to more soberly as “historically informed performance.” What made me think that? The balance of winds against strings was stronger, giving greater clarity, and the orchestra played with attention to every phrase. Not even the repeats sounded automatic.

And, in fact, Mackerras’s notes for the recording show that he had consulted Schubert’s original score—and even made the surprising discovery that the opening andante is actually marked cut-time, not common time as in the editions. In other words, it need to be played about twice as fast as it usually is. He also noted that the ratio of violins to other instruments in the Scottish Chamber Orchestra was about what Schubert would have known.

The different instrumental balance altered the listening experience. There was no wall of blended sound, but something more like chamber music, with the various voices engaged in a dialogue that steadily moves the argument along. Even with a smaller ensemble, the Scots managed some splendid fortissimos that were all the more impressive because they can also play so quietly.

But equally important was the attention to phrasing and to what I think of as the “rhetoric” of the music—that business of moving the argument of the piece along. I like Mackerras’ decision to give the second movement almost a “funeral march” quality, where my other recording treated it more as a kind of dance, which made the following scherzo seem unnecessary. It wasn’t a matter of tempo. Mackerras’s second movement is actually a bit shorter and his scherzo much shorter. It’s a matter of giving the music a well-thought-out profile.

I find the same qualities in the series of Beethoven symphonies performed by David Zinman, conducting the Tonhalle Orchestra of Zurich—a gift from my daughter to replace (you guessed it) a set lost in the burglary. Again, Zinman is not an “early music” musician as such. Even though he uses the latest edition of the symphonies, the orchestra plays modern instruments (which, for that matter, I think the Scottish Chamber Orchestra does).

Still, there’s the same quality of clarity and thoughtful phrasing and rhetoric—things that, as I said, I have associated with the historically informed performance folk. And I think it was, in fact, this movement that got people looking at the original documents and trying to recover practices that had been submerged in the growth of larger orchestras and more powerful instruments. A lot of the lessons, in the hands of great musicians, have filtered over into modern-instrument contexts where nobody has struggled to master cranky 17th or 18th century instruments. It encourages musicians, paradoxically enough, to get a new take on the music instead of repeating the conventional one.

All to the good. And yet, there is nothing quite like having it all. An evening with the brilliant Nic McGegan conducting the “early music” Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra is one of the chief musical blessings of life in the Bay Area. Nobody will ever know for sure that what we hear there is “authentic” or exactly what the composer intended. It is just wonderfully energetic, intelligent, nuanced performance where you can really hear what’s going on in the music and the results are predictably gripping.