Richard Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben (1897 98) is known for its autobiography and the composer provided with it a titled narrative programme. The violin solo depicting Strauss’s loving wife Pauline is charismatically played by Maighréad McCrann, and is followed of course by the caricature depiction of the composer’s adversaries, over whom he is finally victorious. The soaring horns on this performance from the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra move the narration onwards into ‘The Hero’s Works of Peace’ (where Strauss looks back over his past musical successes), while ‘The Hero’s Retirement and Fulfilment’ brings an apotheosis with a glorious closing theme for strings and a particularly well-taken horn solo before the final cadence.

This excellently recorded performance under Cornelius Meister is superbly played and spontaneous. It stands up well against its countless rivals, notably Karajan and the ardently sumptuous Berlin Philharmonic, which Richard Osborne described as ‘lambent in its beauty’. Beecham with the RPO, also on Testament, is a model of its kind, a glorious performance, authoritative and marvellously played, while Jansons’s equally magnificent Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra recording comes in a splendid SACD performance in which the sound appears entirely natural.

Metamorphosen for 23 solo strings can be regarded as being ‘a commemoration of a world destroyed’. Much of Berlin, Dresden and Vienna had been destroyed when Strauss wrote his own memorable in memoriam in 1945. It is in three parts, flowing over into one another, while two slow sections frame a slightly quicker section. Overall it is intense; but it only gradually becomes really tragic in the closing pages. The Vienna orchestra and Meister play it with a passionate impetus that is wholly spontaneous, with a valedictory feeling. The recording is outstandingly fine. Rattle is the main competitor here, who with the Vienna Philharmonic produces sounds of magical beauty and intensity, but Karajan is again at his very finest with the Berlin Philharmonic.