Hot on the heels of Sir Charles Mackerras’s set of Janácek’s orchestral music (5/04) – issued with the threat that it was his last Janácek recording – comes this superb issue of the composer’s most approachable opera. He recorded Jenufa for Decca with the Vienna Philharmonic in 1982 as part of his Award-winning series, and anyone insisting on having it sung in Czech will remain true to that classic version. Yet in important ways this new set, in the English translation by Edward Downes and Otakar Kraus and based on an acclaimed Welsh National Opera production, is even more involving.

The WNO orchestra may not have the pedigree of the VPO but they bring finely honed playing and an idiomatic warmth born of long acquaintance with the opera. If anything, the intense emotion – magnetic from first to last – comes over even more powerfully than in the Decca set.

As before, Mackerras uses the original scoring of the so-called 1908 Brno version (without Karel Kovarovic’s radical reorchestration) and he takes a marginally broader view than he did for Decca while losing nothing in power or drama. He is aided by a sumptuous recording from Swansea’s Brangwyn Hall. It may at first seem a disadvantage that the voices are placed a little farther back than for Decca – words from the female voices in particular are less clear. Yet the big benefit is that the striking originality and distinctive colourings of Janácek’s orchestration are more vividly caught: the clarity of the stuttering vibraphone figure, for example, so distinctive in this score, adds greatly to the atmosphere. Helped by occasional sound-effects, the sense of presence and the illusion of a live performance are intensified.

Both casts are strong. If it was luxury casting to have Söderström in the title-role on Decca, Janice Watson on Chandos has just as beautiful a voice, and sounds more apt – young, fresh and girlish, and deeply expressive, too. As the Kostelnicka, Josephine Barstow is a striking contrast to Eva Randová, against whose Wagnerian richness and power Barstow’s voice is edgier and more abrasive. She conveys not only the obsessive side of this powerful character but a very apt element of vulnerability. The monologue at the end of Act 2 when she resolves to murder Jenufa’s baby is chilling in its power, wonderfully contrasted with Jenufa’s later monologue, where Watson moves from tenderness through unbalanced disorientation to resignation as she prays to the Virgin.

In the two tenor roles Peter Wedd as Steva and Nigel Robson as Laca are sharply differentiated. One of the first moments of pure beauty comes near the start of Act 1 when Laca admits ‘how much I love her’ in hushed, heartfelt tones. Elizabeth Vaughan sings warmly and weightily as Buryja, Neal Davies’s Foreman is strong and incisive, and Charlotte Ellett makes a characterful, chattering Karolka in her big moment in Act 3. This set does not include Decca’s extras – the discarded Prelude Jealousy and Kovarovic’s version of the opera’s conclusion – but the final duet between Jenufa and Laca is even more tender than in Vienna, a radiant epilogue with Janácek at his most subtly evocative.