There’s something grimly irresistible about Zemlinsky’s short and sharp Eine florentinische Tragödie (premiered in 1917). Based on Oscar Wilde’s fragmentary play, it’s a work that unites several trends and tendencies of the time: the Wilde-mania that had spawned Strauss’s Salome (and one hears several echoes of Strauss’s 1905 score); a fascination with Renaissance Florence, imagined as brooding, doom-laden and decadent; and verismo’s down-and-dirty depiction of crimes passionels.

But Zemlinsky was such a fine composer that he marshals these elements into a work that’s entirely his own, a curt 50 minutes that’s expertly paced, as finely wrought as the fine fabrics the merchant Simone describes in detail, and which builds the tension gradually to its bittersweet denouement – all the more powerful for being so brief, left to resonate long in the listener’s mind. There are already some fine recordings of the piece in the catalogue but it’s nevertheless an unexpected boon for the composer to have two fine new versions released almost simultaneously.

Both are live: the Munich account was recorded at concert performances, the Amsterdam in the theatre. And those origins can be detected in the results. That on BR-Klassik, with the young Patrick Hahn at the helm, is more controlled, with a more studio-like balance (voices always heard clearly in the sound picture); the other is more febrile, more impassioned, with Marc Albrecht – an established specialist in this repertoire from the first decades of the 20th century – unafraid to unleash his orchestra to full effect.

Both are valid approaches, although it’s Hahn’s that seems more closely aligned to Zemlinsky’s aesthetic – more restrained than that of some of his contemporaries. I’m similarly drawn more to the Munich cast, led by a central performance of hugely impressive, granitic authority from Christopher Maltman, underlining the remarkable recent transformation to fully fledged dramatic bass-baritone. Beside him, Benjamin Bruns makes for an attractive, youthful-sounding Guido, Rachael Wilson a handsome, sensuous Bianca.

For Albrecht, John Lundgren presents a very human Simone, also powerfully sung, but one occasionally senses the strain of having to be heard above the orchestra. Nikolai Schukoff is a slightly soft-grained Guido and Ausrine Stundyte offers plenty of intensity as Bianca but is a little short on cooler, more considered vocal beauty.

Both recordings are very welcome additions to the catalogue, even if for me the outstanding Munich account pips Albrecht’s in Amsterdam to the post. Neither, arguably, displaces Riccardo Chailly’s superb 1997 Decca recording – representing an ideally balanced mixture of excitement and refinement – but they join Vladimir Jurowski’s excellent LPO recording (A/14) to add to a now impressive discography, making persuasive cases for this haunting, powerful work.