Three recordings of the Alpensinfonie have appeared within the past year, with this one from Mariss Jansons following those from Sebastian Weigle (Oehms, 11/16) and Kent Nagano (Farao, A/16). Recorded at two Munich concerts barely six months ago, this new account is undoubtedly the best played and best recorded. In fact, it’s probably one of the best played and best recorded tout court.

The Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra bring a burnished, polished sound to every strand of Strauss’s kaleidoscopic score, and BR-Klassik’s engineering is a marvel of presence, clarity and detail: it’s a big improvement on the the dull, distant sound you get on Jansons’s earlier Concertgebouw account and a step-up, too, from the decent engineering of Franz Welser-Möst’s rather matter-of-fact reading with the same orchestra and label (9/14).

Jansons conjures up some thrilling moments, and, as a sonic spectacle and display of virtuosity and musicianship, this disc takes some beating. You’ll have to go a long way to find a more glitteringly brilliant ‘Waterfall’, for example, or a more impressively executed account of the ‘Storm’. There are dozens of moments where one hears details of the score that are usually lost in the congestion.

Strangely, though, such accomplishment has a flipside: a failure to convey through those notes the poetic feelings that underpin them, especially when we get to the work’s final third. That ‘Storm’ doesn’t, for me, evoke the feeling – literal or metaphorical – of being in a storm, of man pitted against implacable nature.

Nor do ‘Sunset’ and ‘Quiet settles’ fully reach the poetic heights or plumb the emotional depths: the unison violins in the former don’t strain at the leash, while the phrasing of the winds’ big theme in the latter strikes me as strangely laboured. Similarly, ‘On the summit’, despite the sonic splendour, feels slightly stately (and a little brass-heavy in the balance), lacking the visceral sense of exhilaration this moment can convey.

Tod und Verklärung is every bit as well played and recorded, and the work has rarely sounded better. But here too, as in the longer piece, things are predominantly bright and brilliant, with Jansons apparently reluctant to dip a toe into the swirling philosophical undercurrents.