Terms like ‘unexaggerated’ and ‘balanced’ have been admiringly applied to the three previous volumes of David Zinman’s Zurich Strauss cycle, but insofar as those words sound a little lukewarm they do the series an injustice. Beautifully flexible lyricism is another of their qualities, as you hear in the Alpine Symphony’s forest music or, at the beginning of ‘At the Summit’, in the wondering gazes at vast landscapes below. And the whole of the culminating penultimate Ausklang (‘Epilogue’, but also ‘Dying Away’) is exquisite: coolly radiant at the outset, then a grave meditation as night falls. Once or twice I felt a need for just a little exaggeration or imbalance, but Zinman is no show-off (Strauss was, rather) and so the string melody of ‘The Ascent’ doesn’t quite have the flashing, even flashy quality that more extrovert conductors give it. You may well be grateful for an Alpine Symphony whose poetry stays longer in the memory than its histrionics (though the organ is satisfyingly palpable, wind- and thunder-machines properly in evidence and all those extra offstage horns a poetic effect in themselves – just that much further offstage than in showier readings).

The seldom-recorded Festliches Präludium is still more extravagant: Strauss asks for 12 offstage trumpets (he gets six here) and arranges magnificent antiphonal effects between his huge orchestra and a large organ. It is a weird mixture of distinguished lyrical writing, affectionate nods towards the composers of old Vienna (the piece was written to open the city’s Konzerthaus) and the merest bombast; Zinman ensures that the former are not quite overwhelmed by the last. The recording, in both works, is sumptuously colourful.