Thomas Dausgaard’s early-Romantic-era recordings, played in smaller-scale performances by the Swedish Chamber Orchestra, have offered discreet transformations of well-loved works, though the current set is really more for those who can’t get enough of Nina Stemme. She dominates with the Wesendonck-Lieder, which have all of her customary vocal richness but also an amplitude and approach towards the text that’s appropriate to the larger scale and broader strokes of opera rather than art song. And that seems not to be the purpose of this disc, which is to probe what lies behind the Tristanesque sheen that is now applied to most of Wagner’s pre-Tristan works. The Felix Mottl orchestration is certainly convincing when played by chamber orchestra, posing the possibility of what a smaller-voiced lyric soprano with greater text specificity might bring to the piece.

A lost opportunity, then? Somewhat. The smaller-scale performances of the Flying Dutchman Overture (both versions) and the Meistersinger Prelude are interesting but haven’t really added much to my understanding of the pieces. Siegfried Idyll is usually heard under chamber orchestra circumstances, and both the quality of playing and sheen of the strings are up there with the best. But is it possible that Dausgaard’s heart doesn’t belong to Wagner?