When Deutsche Grammophon issued the “first complete recording” of Berio’s Sequenzas in 1998 they couldn’t have known that events were about to overtake them. The composer squeezed out one more “original” Sequenza – for cellist Rohan de Saram – the year before his death in 2003, while transcriptions and adaptations continue to flourish.

It’s no surprise that interest in the Sequenzas feels unquenchable. The cycle – which began in 1958 with a Sequenza for pioneering flautist Severino Gazzelloni – seems severed from the very bedrock of modernism. At its aesthetic core is Berio’s fascination for developing all compositional parameters from harmony to encourage a “polyphonic mode of listening”, a challenge especially acute during the pieces conceived for monody instruments. The accordion and guitar pieces embrace potent cultural associations with tango and flamenco, although Berio conspicuously avoids referencing jazz in the saxophone Sequenzas, which are arguably the least engaging.

Now, just as the six-year gestation of the Naxos three-CD version comes to fruition, Mode’s 10-year plan for the Sequenzas is released almost simultaneously. Not only does Mode boast Rohan de Saram playing the Sequenza Berio designed for him, it has the corresponding double-bass transcription performed with zealous intensity by Stefano Scodanibbio. The physicality and range of tone-colour in Aki Takahashi’s version of the piano Sequenza brings Boris Berman’s Naxos performance in a poor second; and Mode also triumphs with the supplementary CD of smaller instrumental works. The ethereal Fa-Si (1975) for organ is a near-unknown gem, and Getsi (1966) transforms the innocent recorder into a feral sound-source.

But Mode doesn’t have things all its way. Bassoonist Ken Munday’s Sequenza XII on Naxos sculpts Berio’s microtonal zigzags with a keener trajectory than Mode’s Noriko Shimada (although DG’s Pascal Gallois still comes out top). Sequenza VIII is another reversal of expectations – Irvine Arditti brings visceral excitement but Naxos’s fuller-toned Jaspar Wood penetrates deeper into its core. Realistically Berio aficionados are going to need both sets, but Edoardo Sanguineti’s dedicated poems read between each Sequenza on Mode is another bonus to be factored into the equation.