It maybe seems a bit unfair to pit Strauss’s brilliant Till Eulengspiegel against Die Seejungfrau, more of a slow-burn affair by a composer whose gifts were a little less prodigious. And Zemlinsky’s 1903 ‘fantasy in three movements’ after The Little Mermaid is even more of a slow-burner in the new critical edition by Antony Beaumont recorded here, which reinstates four minutes of lost music in the middle movement (the work itself was rediscovered only in the 1980s, after Zemlinsky more or less cast it aside following the 1905 premiere alongside Schoenberg’s Pelleas und Melissande).

Emmanuel Krivine has long been a champion of the score, and this recording – the last of a series made with the Luxembourg orchestra of which he was chief conductor until last year – shows that he has a firm grip on its structure. It’s a somewhat diffuse work, a slippery creature to get a hold on, given the fact that, unlike Till, it is not overtly narrative. But it contains some wonderful music and is full of gentle yearning and delicious fin de siècle ripeness and Weltschmerz. And Krivine clearly loves it, bringing ardency to the Gurrelieder-like love music, and doing a pretty good job of conjuring up the mysterious, ominous ocean deep which forms its foundation.

It’s a shame, though, that the recorded sound captured in the Philharmonie Luxembourg is rather fussy, its focus on surface details obscuring those all-important depths and forcing us to lose any grander sonic panorama. Busier passages sound cluttered and congested (listen from nine minutes into the first movement for example, or to the big burst of sea spray that opens the second movement), solo contributions are too closely miked and the orchestral picture is short on shimmer. It does the work few favours; ditto the orchestra, whose sound can come across as brittle and unrefined. It doesn’t help make a case for the extended version, either, which is far better served by Ondine’s luxurious sound for John Storgårds and the Helsinki Philharmonic (the only other recording of this version). Stick with that for the new edition; personal favourites for the more widely recorded shorter version, meanwhile, include Chailly and Dausgaard (on Decca and Chandos respectively)

Happily the sound is less of a problem in the sprightly and springy Strauss. Krivine doesn’t dilly-dally, and it serves as a fine showcase for the orchestra’s soloists, even if the playing is not a match for the finest orchestras in this work.