Howard Shelley, BBC Philharmonic, Matthias Bamert - Dohnányi: Symphonic Works (1999) CD-Rip

Dohnányi's penchant for quality musical entertainment bore popular fruit with his perennially fresh Variations on a Nursery Theme.
Howard Shelley's performance is a model of wit and style, blending in with the orchestra whenever the moment seems right and employing an ideal brand of rubato. Bamert's conducting is properly portentous in the Introduction and charming elsewhere, whether in the musicbox delights of the fifth variation, the animated bustle of the sixth or the seventh's novel scoring (plenty for the bassoons and bass drum).
Kocsis and Fischer's is still marginally the best version overall, but Shelley and Bamert are no less musical.
Lovely, too, is the F sharp minor Suite, especially the opening Andante con variazioni which seems to straddle the worlds of Dvorák and Elgar (try the serene string choirs from 9'35").
The stamping Scherzo brings to mind the Scherzo from Bruckner's Ninth Symphony, and the tuneful Rondo finale has a striking resemblance to a key passage in the Rondo-burleske in Mahler's Ninth.
Also included is the very first recording of TheVeil of Pierrette, four scenes from a mimed entertainment dating from 1908-9. The best movement is the exuberant 'Wedding Waltz' (track 21), rumbustious music, carefree and beautifully scored. Chandos has come up with a dazzlingly realistic recording.