Though the dainty Notturno receives its first recording as part of this intriguing collection of less-recorded Schoenbergiana, the more stimulating rarity is the Straussian set of Songs, Op 8. Engineering, orchestral playing and conducting are all more sumptuously coloured than on the single available rival, and those responsible take care not to overwhelm a vocal line that would seem to cry out for a Jessye Norman. What Manuela Uhl lacks in amplitude, however, she more than compensates with agility, always a desired quality when interpreting Schoenberg, and required here when moving from the Gurrelieder-style opulence of “Natur”, through the halting trochaics of a Wunderhorn setting (No 3), to three oblique settings of Petrarch (which would be less impenetrable had MDG supplied translations along with texts, or at least reference to the originals).

Conversely Op 16 takes a while to recover from a lumbering performance (the slowest yet recorded) of the first piece, and accuracy continues to be prized over vivid characterisation in the middle three: flamboyance is also crucially missing from Schoenberg’s reimagining of the “St Anne” Prelude and Fugue, at least when compared with Rozhdestvensky (Melodiya, nla) or Erich Kleiber (Biddulph). But Blunier and his Bonn players find in the last of Op 16, “The Obbligato Recitative”, a magical albeit fleeting vision of the music of the future. Hesitation and stiffness are thrown off as his improvisatory melody reaches across instruments like a climber over an Alpine crevasse, the goal always in view but tantalisingly beyond reach. Incidental reservations aside, the disc deserves to convert a few Schoenberg sceptics, to the man’s protean capacity for reinvention if nothing else.