Only four years after the release of his thrilling live LPO recording of Strauss’s Alpensinfonie, here comes Vladimir Jurowski with another live recording of the work. This time, it’s with his German orchestra, the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin (of which he’s been chief conductor since 2017). It’s a thrilling achievement, brilliantly played and immaculately recorded by Pentatone, that shows how the conductor’s approach to the work has changed – and how it hasn’t – in the intervening years.

One obvious difference comes in the running times: the new recording comes in four minutes longer than the London account. That translates to a general extra spaciousness, to a sense of giving the music its due where the earlier recording occasionally felt, if not rushed, then at times mildly impatient. Now there’s a little less impetuosity and arguably less excitement in the score’s first third; the climb is less athletic but there’s more time to take in the sights, all captured in stunning detail.

The quality of the performance and the coherence of Jurowski’s vision become ever clearer as we approach the summit: the drama is ratcheted up brilliantly as we arrive at an awe-inspiring glacier, while the ‘Dangerous Moments’ are vividly etched. The summit itself is broad and generous, not to mention sonically spectacular.

In a booklet note, Jurowski writes beautifully of the two layers of the work – the pictorial and the philosophical. The first aspect is superbly realised: striking details abound (listen to how he delineates between forte bassons and piano oboe, for example, after the cor anglais solo, at 1'18" in ‘Elegie’), and there’s gripping drama as he turns the screw in the final bars of ‘Vision’. He delivers surely one of the most thrilling storms on record (how telling, too, is the way he distinguishes between ‘just’ ff and a shattering full fff).

Underlying all that, though, is a deep sense not only of the work’s overarching structure but also of what’s at stake. This translates into an account of the final minutes that rivals Karajan’s classic recording from 40 years earlier in capturing that moving sense of ‘universal harmony’ (as Jurowski terms it), even if the Berlin winds can’t quite match the powerful, seamless legato of their Berlin Philharmonic forebears. All in all, though, this is an Alpensinfonie to join any list of top recommendations.