Both these releases qualify as essential listening. Though composed about 15 years apart, NUN and Ausklang have much in common. Both are orchestral works conceived on a large scale, lasting around 45 minutes (Ausklang is a bit longer) and featuring soloists: Ausklang’s subtitle is “Piano Concerto” and NUN has solo parts for flute and trombone (and a small male chorus). Both have had studio recordings but these live readings add something new: the score of NUN has been revised since the recording for Kairos in 2001. Finally, both are classic examples of Lachenmann’s approach to the orchestra and, more fundamentally, to sound itself. Ausklang is better known but the flute’s breathy warmth and the trombone’s copper hues make NUN one of his most evocative scores. There’s perhaps a greater sense of perspective in the new reading, the strings in particular being more present at crucial junctures (perhaps a result of revisions).

Most intriguing, perhaps, is the decision to pair Ausklang in concert with Richard Strauss’s Alpine Symphony, an idea suggested to the Ensemble Modern Orchestra by Lachenmann himself. As the author of the informative booklet-notes observes, such a ploy runs the risk of putting off two sectors of the audience rather than one, but for those open-minded enough to stay the course, there are unexpected surprises. It’s even possible to hear Lachenmann in the section of Strauss’s score marked “Calm before the Storm”: the sparse repetitions of a single pitch, punctuated by splintered wind interjections, are uncannily characteristic. For the rest, the pace of Ausklang’s argument is a touch more leisurely, the solo instrument marginally more rounded than on the original Col Legno recording. The audible pedal changes, far from being a distraction, become triggers signalling shifts in resonance, as when one changes registers on an organ. To my ear there’s little to choose between the two versions, but in a score of this complexity, an alternative perspective is precious indeed. It’s worth remarking again on the booklet-note for Ausklang, for lucid introductions to the composer’s demanding aesthetic are hard to come by in English. By contrast, the notes to NUN are less than helpful; don’t be put off.