Hearing this pair of compositions one after the other underlines just how far Schoenberg travelled in matters of style and technique between 1903, when he completed Pelleas und Melisande, and 1909, the year of Erwartung. However, the late Romanticism of the former and the post-tonal Expressionism of the latter both involve the kind of concentrated, elaborate textures that, more than a century on, still present challenges to performers – and to recording technicians.

In his recently released 2003 recording of Pelleas with the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester (5/12), Pierre Boulez offered a masterclass in the difficult art of avoiding the exaggerations of melodrama without lapsing into understatement or superficiality. Jukka-Pekka Saraste is no less full-blooded; but this virtue can quickly turn into the kind of over-emphasis that is underlined by allowing the tempo to fluctuate at the least excuse and by a recording that favours rather generalised textures within a relatively narrow dynamic range.

That narrow range is also apparent in Erwartung. Maybe Schoenberg was unrealistic in asking his solo soprano to sing quietly in so many places but Jeanne-Michèle Charbonnet’s performance, as recorded here, makes this kaleidoscopic score seem unremittingly hectic. Given the singer’s forward placement and the somewhat compressed effect of the orchestral accompaniment, this lack of intimacy is surprising. However, if you believe that Erwartung embodies the composer’s agonised attempt to exorcise the events of just a year before its composition, when his wife’s brief elopement with, then abandonment of, a lover led to the lover’s suicide, the music can never be too raw or shocking in effect.