Here we have it – a new mix of the ‘homecoming’ for Langgaard’s epic Symphony No 1, as broadcast from the Philharmonie on the Digital Concert Hall last year (see Online Concerts and Events, 10/22). Listening without watching is of course a different experience and Preben Iwan’s sound has impact, bringing more weight to the endlessly striving strings and a general heft that underlines the work’s position as a proto-Alpine Symphony.

It’s worth reiterating that the forces are big: two sets of timpani, two tubas, four of the eight horns doubling Wagner tubas (two here) and an auxiliary brass choir. No wonder it was deemed unplayable in Denmark and Sweden, instead falling into the hands of the Berlin Philharmonic, which gave it a triumphant premiere in 1913, shortly before the world moved on and Rued Langgaard was left stranded inside his own head.

Still, this hour-long work from a 19-year-old, self-taught composer from Copenhagen doesn’t get any less astonishing. Take away its sense of imposition and the thematic unity is remarkable enough – there’s not a stretch of 10 bars in which you don’t hear one of the work’s central motifs iterated somehow. Langgaard’s ability to build tension towards his recapitulations and to cast his orchestra into sudden wildness is all here but the toll all that takes on musicians over the course of 55 minutes is notable. In particular, there’s no let-up for string players on this five-movement mountain ascent, whose parts are crammed with figuration, decoration and rhetoric even when they’re being given a break from actual thematic propulsion.

That’s when you’re thankful you’re listening to the Berlin Philharmonic, although there’s nothing technically lacking on Thomas Dausgaard’s exceptionally detailed and meticulously prepared recording with the Danish National Symphony Orchestra (also on Dacapo), more intricate and structural when heard against all Oramo’s breadth and edginess. The Berlin players offer stamina and assurance, vital in those multilayered accompaniments and sudden jump-cuts. As observed previously, they can handle Langgaard’s tendency to bellow ‘bigger, louder’ in the outer movements and do so with swagger. Horns and Wagner tubas are particularly magnificent (how about the former at bar 462 in the first movement, at 19'06"?) but in truth you probably hear the sonic qualities of the orchestra better in the interlude-style second and third movements, where storms aren’t raging – particularly the latter’s yeast-like rise to intensity.

Naturally, the Berliners have an ease of utterance when it comes to Langgaard’s scattered references to heil’ge deutsche Kunst. The orchestration in the finale movement and its predecessor – the start of the mountain ascent – is bolder than it can seem in a symphony that is, actually, rather more than the thrilling union of formal discipline and intense vision that it can form in the memory. How wonderful that it has found an audience in Berlin after nearly 110 years, the context of which you can discover in Jens Cornelius’s excellent booklet note. How about Langgaard’s Fourth, Sixth and Eleventh next?