When the 20-year-old Herbert von Karajan conducted Strauss’s Don Juan at his first professional concert in Salzburg in January 1929, one violinist reported, “It was like being connected to a pylon and having 40,000 volts run through us”. I don’t know what the voltage count was in Symphony Hall on May 28, 2009, when Andris Nelsons took the CBSO through Artur Rod zinski’s 25-minute Rosenkavalier Suite but it must have been pretty high. At one level, the suite is an unabashed piece of musical kitsch, at another it is an effective and affecting if occasionally rambunctious overview of this glorious work. Nelsons has yet to conduct the opera itself but he directs Rodzinski’s suite as if he was Karajan and both Kleibers rolled into one, with a touch of André Kostelanetz thrown in for good measure. The CBSO play superbly for their new young principal conductor.

The Rosenkavalier Suite was recorded at a single performance, the Ein Heldenleben taken from three performances the following month. The CBSO is some way from acquiring the full range and blend of colours and sonorities Strauss ideally needs. As Beecham proved, this doesn’t have to be a specifically Austro-German sound but Beecham’s Strauss was rarely less than sensuous and always finely nuanced. In this new Ein Heldenleben the more energetic music can be a bit of a free-for-all. The troops need shrewder marshalling in the battle scene if the hero’s routing of them is to carry its full weight and glory. As to the hero’s works of peace, it probably needs more experience of Strauss’s music than Nelsons currently possesses for their significance to be fully savoured. That said, Nelsons and his musicians bring sensitivity and style to many of the score’s more reflective passages. The Symphony Hall recording is very fine.