Is it inevitable that Henze’s most orthodox symphony is destined to receive more recordings than any of his others? This is the fourth release of the Seventh, following on from Janowski (Wergo, 12/08), Cambreling (Hänssler Classic, 5/03) and, still most visceral and compelling of all, Rattle (EMI/Warner, 11/93). Hunt around online and a broadcast of the 1984 premiere, with the Berlin Philharmonic under Gianluigi Gelmetti, is easy to find too.

Either way, it’s a pleasure to see the composer’s discography thickening out, particularly in Stenz’s firm, assured hands. Forensically detailed and immaculately coloured even when this music is at its most violent, Stenz’s unimpeachable Cologne players deliver an eerie mystery in the slow movement, as if recalling Berg in a bad dream, and capture the madness in what Henze called his ‘nasty scherzo’ with clinical, merciless ease. The flutter, the gentle sway of the finale’s first bars nowhere else sounds so beguiling. But turn to Rattle and the atmosphere is more charged, the chasm between beauty and brutality more gaping. Henze’s relationship with the symphonic tradition therefore sounds far more torn.

Stenz’s couplings are novel and welcome. Henze’s nods to Spanish music, the Seven Boleros (1998), have a gauzy quality, with a dangerous swagger in ‘El pavo real’ and a heated swing to ‘La irascible’. His last completed piece, the Ouvertüre zu einem Theater (2012), provides an upbeat moment. Some confusion over the final piece, though: what the booklet notes think is L’heure bleue, a ten-minute 2001 chamber piece, is actually ‘Die blaue Stunde’, the ravishing final tableau to the 2003 opera L’Upupa und der Triumph der Sohnesliebe. Easy mistake to make, I’m sure.