Where do you turn after taping the complete mature operas of Richard Wagner? To the man who contributed the very last notes to Parsifal, of course. Marek Janowski’s Wagner series for Pentatone has its operatic successor here in a live recording of Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel from the same orchestra and the same hall. ‘The conductor’s pace and lack of weight do not increase the tension’, wrote Mike Ashman of Janowski’s Parsifal (10/12). Much the same might be said here.

Janowski certainly errs on the side of luminosity; there is something of the raised grail about his Prelude. But the orchestra’s strings sound consistently thin and the ultimate problem throughout is a fatal lack of bite and that quick, nullifying pace. Many of the opera’s most theatrical junctions are cruised over (the father’s ‘Was?’ and ‘Am Ilsenstein?’ in Act 1; ‘Fürchtet ihr euch nicht’ with its tender accompanying violin in Act 2) and there is little sense of fright – no mystery critters poking out of the orchestra – in the surrounding forest scenes. Janowski’s reluctance to execute unmarked tempo shifts is admirable but theatrically inflexible and surely not what Humperdinck the storyteller envisaged; there’s a reason most conductors gear down at the appearance of the Dew Fairy, as we realise when Janowski cruises on through. Ditto the central section of the Witch’s Ride and at the waltz that follows her demise.

There is some character in the singing, particularly from the parents. Ricarda Merbeth’s Mother is nicely harridan at first before collapsing evocatively into poverty-induced despair; Albert Dohmen’s Father has an underlying nobility that emerges movingly in the final scene. Both the children are comparatively rich of voice but well cast as a pair, given Alexandra Steiner’s Gretel has a touch more glint than Katrin Wundsam’s Hänsel and her vibrato can seem appropriately prissy and plaited. The tenor Witch, Christian Elsner, lets the register of the voice create the pantomime but feels like he’s holding back the text-based drama, perhaps as the orchestra is reluctant to have much fun underneath him. Collection recommendations (12/15) still stand.