A composer’s recordings of his own works will often sweep the board, but the third of Bernstein’s symphonies is such a strange hybrid that every attempt to set it down has involved a radical rethink. The piece can seem as much a hysterical lecture to a recalcitrant deity (with background music) as a truly ‘symphonic’ entity. This is particularly so in the original 1963 version, available on Sony, where Felicia Montealegre’s delivery of her husband’s prose is positively heroic. Bernstein also conducts the Israel Philharmonic in a 1977 re-make with Michael Wager narrating a pruned text.

In the late 1990s Yutaka Sado recorded the Kaddish and the Chichester Psalms with mainly French forces: Yehudi Menuhin adds his own brand of conciliatory gravitas to the proceedings. Nevertheless, the underlying concept remains in place.

Now Leonard Slatkin, who used to avoid the score, has teamed up with the composer’s daughter to present a very personal solution in which the narration is revamped in terms of personal reminiscence. One cannot but admire the courage of Jamie Bernstein Thomas in daring so radical a rewrite, putting the emphasis on her father’s insomniac battles with Judeao-Christian morality, his reaction to his colleagues’ flight from tonality and who knows what else. She has spoken frankly of her intentions: ‘It’s a kind of dialogue, and it’s sort of yet another layer of arguing with your father. Because my father’s text begins, and is addressed to, “Oh, my Father”. So he’s addressing his god, of course, but it’s also, in a way, an argument with his own father who was a Talmudic scholar, and they had all sorts of troubles of their own. And now I’m adding my own layer of arguing with my father and taking him to task for his narration.’

In delivering her text she sounds like Jamie Lee Curtis in smart, unhysterical mode. The results will be controversial. We lose the central trope in which the speaker calls on God to believe in Man: ‘Father! Believe!’ Also surprising is the choice of Ann Murray in that high-lying solo part, something of a throwback to Jennie Tourel in 1963. The voice hardens and spreads under pressure, partly a matter of a close microphone placement in an otherwise ample acoustic– Karita Mattila for Sado is better integrated with the other performers – but she sings with her customary intelligence and involvement. Otherwise honours are just about even. Like Sado only more so, Slatkin lacks the extremist fervour that some find de rigueur, others claustrophobic, in the composer’s performances.

The Chandos disc includes a bonus item from the BBC Singers and friends in what would seem to be the first recording of the liturgical version of the Missa brevis (1955 revised 1988). Based on incidental music from The Lark, a long-running Lillian Hellman adaptation of Jean Anouilh, its Tavener-style primitivism (yes, there are handbells) could well prove popular today. The Chichester Psalms are so much easier to bring off than the main work that comment seems superfluous. Suffice to say that Slatkin allows the melodies to flow without the mawkishness that can result from overly interventionist nuancing.