Typical! You wait years for a recording of Henze’s Eighth (1992-93) – the last of Henze’s ten to be issued complete on disc – then two arrive within weeks! Inspired by three speeches in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, No 8 is the most beguiling and immediately appealing of them, beautifully written for the orchestra and luminous in tone. Janowski and his Berlin players audibly relish Puck’s putting a girdle round the earth (though in under eight minutes, not Shakespeare’s 40!), traversing from middle C to the polar extremes of the orchestra’s register. There’s fun in the Ballabille scherzo where Janowski catches the Stravinskian rhythmic undertow. With nothing to choose between this newcomer and Stenz’s premiere outing, couplings and engineering will be the deciding factors, Wergo’s sound warmer than Phoenix’s crystal clarity.

This is the third outing for the Seventh (1984), making it Henze’s most recorded. Sadly, the strongest account – Rattle’s, made while still at Birmingham (11/93) – is currently unavailable. Despite differences in approach, not least in duration with Rattle three and a half minutes slower (mostly in the sonata-form second movement and finale), Janowski’s will do very nicely and is consistently more impressive than Cambreling. True, Janowski does not match Rattle’s impulsion in the opening Tanz (also in sonata form) but his performance catches fire in the central movements, especially in the Scherzo’s macabre depiction of the instruments of torture used on the poet Hölderlin. Janowski’s finale – much swifter than Rattle’s – is wholly convincing where Cambreling’s was workaday. The latter’s coupling of Ariosi is impressive, however, as are Stenz’s Nachtstücke und Arien and Bassarids Suite; but if the symphonies alone are your priority, Janowski’s disc is the best option.