Oddly enough, just before this disc dropped through the door I was listening to Pierre Fournier’s 1960s recording of Don Quixote, which has long been for me the ne plus ultra of performances of Strauss’s Cervantes excursion by reason of its sympathetic warmth and gentle wit, together with the poise that was always a hallmark of Fournier’s playing and the aching tenderness and emotional restraint he brought to Quixote’s death-bed reflections at the end. Karajan was no slouch in conducting the Berlin Philharmonic, either: the characterisation is sharp, the orchestral sound gorgeous. The recording has survived in the catalogue all these decades and is still available on DG Originals.

However, there is a great deal to commend this new disc, notably in the solo roles by Alban Gerhardt (who sports a Gofriller cello, as did Fournier) and Lawrence Power as his viola-playing Sancho Panza. The Gürzenich-Orchester Köln is not quite the Berlin Phil in lustre and there can be a strident edge to the sound, as for example in the attack on the innocent penitents in Var 4 and the duel with the knight of the shining moon in Var 10. But pictorial points are in general well made; the scenes are colourfully set; and both Gerhardt and Power are such fine, sensitive and expressive musicians that they encapsulate the varied moods of their protagonists poignantly and purposefully. Markus Stenz attacks Till Eulenspiegel with vigour, spirited detail and humour, the orchestra relishing the cut and thrust of Till’s picaresque pranks.