Here’s the second recording of Magnus Lindberg’s Era to be issued this year. The piece was written for the RCO, designed for its hall’s acoustic and conceived as a celebration of its orchestral brilliance. With that in mind, I was holding my breath reviewing Hannu Lintu’s spiky, disciplined studio recording, knowing this was on the way. The RCO’s approach under David Robertson is softer, warmer (though not hotter) and apparently concerned more with the work’s elements of nostalgia than with its references to Sibelius’s Fourth. It feels a little standoffish. Stick to Lintu.

But – and it’s a big but – the true wonder of the RCO’s ‘Horizon’ series is in the sonic journey each record presents. And you’ll want to hear George Benjamin’s Dream of the Song, especially in this almost creepily perfect performance from Bejun Mehta. The six songs for countertenor, women’s chorus and small orchestra set varying texts with roots in Granada and were composed in the wake of Written on Skin. That shows in the teetering sensuality of Benjamin’s writing, often so close to slipping from eroticism into catastrophe. The solo vocal writing has a smoky, coiled lyricism and the orchestra is endlessly terse and reactive, somehow more tangible in its introspection than in its moments of protest. The string-writing at the start of ‘The Gazelle’ and the high horn, celesta, harp and women’s voices that introduce ‘My heart thinks as the sun comes up’ make you long to see the score.

Particularly enlivening is Benjamin’s tendency to play at the hinterlands of his orchestra, to have isolated corners of the ensemble collapse into panic without disrupting the meta-flow. In Richard Rijnvos’s reflection on the night La Fenice was destroyed by fire, fuoco e fumo, there’s one micro-narrative and it’s right in the foreground, underpinned by an almost constant B natural. We hear the immense strain as the structure falters, buckles and collapses. Highly focused and highly effective.

Tan Dun’s double bass concerto The Wolf was commissioned by five symphony orchestras for their respective section principals to play. The first to get a stab at it – under the composer’s baton – was the RCO’s Dominic Seldis. Soloists have to master fingering techniques from the ancient traditions of China and Mongolia as the concerto tells of the Mongols’ sacred animal, the wolf, and its attachment to its mother (a metaphor for human interaction with the planet). Other than that, the concerto is ultra-traditional: fast outer movements in which material is passed from ensemble to soloist and back, and a slow movement – the work’s heart – in which the bass drapes a long song over pizzicato strings and floating winds. Some tokenistic genre tourism, some moments of depth, but an astute complement to the other music presented here and breathtaking, chameleonic playing from Seldis that tells you why he’s this incredible orchestra’s principal.