This exhilarating account of the Italian Symphony was recorded live at the Barbican two years ago, the more rarely programmed C minor work of the 14-year-old Mendelssohn earlier this year. At theat concert, Gardiner chose to conduct both the 1824 original Minuet—unusually marked Allegro molto—and the dazzling transcription of the scherzo from the string Octet he made for a London performance in 1829/ By then, the composer's prodigious talent had flowered into genius. Gardiner's Mendelssohn is as genial as it gets.