This CD underlines Schreker’s commitment to a style which came to seem increasingly conservative in the three decades which separate the two works included. Listening ‘blind’, could you guess that the Vorspiel zu einer grossen Oper (or Prelude to Memnon) (1933) was written 30 years after the Romantic Suite (1903)? The Prelude has a more personal character, certainly: and it inhabits its late Romantic world more persuasively than the Suite – not surprisingly, since the Suite was completed when Schreker was only 25.

Naxos’s decision to reissue this 14-year old coupling, originally on the Marco Polo label, is a case of bad timing, since it comes so soon after the excellent Chandos performances listed above. Vassily Sinaisky and the BBC Philharmonic are better recorded, with a sense of space and much significant orchestral detail which the very generalised Naxos sound blurs over. In addition, the Chandos disc also contains about 27 minutes more music, making the Naxos price advantage less meaningful than usual: and since these extra minutes include the compelling Katarina Karnéus in one of Schreker’s most interesting works, the Fünf Gesänge, the advantage of the full-price disc over the bargain-price one is unassailable.

Uwe Mund is an experienced conductor, but the music is not always characterised as vividly as is necessary if an impression of over-scored note-spinning is not to arise, as it does here in the early stages of the Romantic Suite. The atmospheric ending of the Prelude comes off particularly well, yet the superior Chandos sound makes for a still more attractive alternative.