Back in the heyday of LP, Zubin Mehta recorded both these works for Decca with the Los Angeles Philharmonic (1/68, 8/69). At the time, recordings of Schoenberg – even Verklärte Nacht – were pretty rare: yet when those versions reappeared on CD, with other Schoenberg works conducted by Christoph von Dohnányi (8/96), alternatives were legion, and this is still the case today.

The strings of the Bavarian State Orchestra make a magnificently opulent sound, and this suits Mehta’s stately, low-tension approach to Schoenberg’s early tone-poem. This is a very leisurely stroll through the woods, in very bright moonlight, and revelling in the finely burnished string tone counts for more than keeping rhythm and phrase structure alert and supple. The score itself ensures that rhetorical flourishes are not completely absent, but Mehta’s account is at the opposite extreme from those more tensile, mobile readings which I prefer – the Orpheus CO (DG, 7/90 – nla), the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra, or the Camerata Bern.

In the first Chamber Symphony the inherent propulsiveness of Schoenberg’s intricate counterpoint is not resisted to the same extent, and more excellent playing and admirably clear textural balancing are on offer. On the debit side, dynamic contrasts are evened out, and not all the tricky shifts of tempo are well managed. For these two works in one release you would do better to seek out Mehta’s earlier readings, or the Tapiola Sinfonietta’s two-disc album – at least until DG reissues the Orpheus CO’s peerless versions.