‘We started big’, says Santtu-Matias Rouvali’s welcome note in the booklet about his first season at the helm of the Philharmonia. And the orchestra’s new label starts big, too, with this generous double album of Richard Strauss. It’s generous in all senses, with extensive documentation accompanying performances that are expansive, vividly recorded and beautifully played.

At the heart of the release are the performances of Eine Alpensinfonie and Also sprach Zarathustra which made up that first concert of the Philharmonia’s 2021 22 season (and its repeat in Basingstoke), a defiant act of music-making on the largest scale following the restrictions imposed by the Covid pandemic. The Don Juan and Till Eulenspiegel were recorded in studio conditions on a single day a few months later.

All the performances show Rouvali as a leisurely Straussian: his Don Juan, though not breaking the 20-minute mark like Andris Nelsons’s recent recording (DG, 6/22), still comes in at a generous 19 minutes. The Alpensinfonie, coming in around the 54-minute mark, is at the more expansive end of the spectrum, as are the 35-minute Also sprach and the 16-and-a-half-minute Till Eulenspiegel.

In the two shorter works, there were moments where I could have done with a bit more forward momentum and Schwung, but both are given interesting readings with plenty of airy detail – the glockenspiel pleasingly but not obtrusively forward in the balance in Don Juan, for example, the winds nicely spotlit. Not everything works – I was less convinced by the strange bulge in Don Juan’s theme (at around 11'14") when it returns after the second love scene, or by the exaggerated pause and slow restart of the cartoonish theme at 8'50" in Till Eulenspiegel – but there’s much to enjoy.

There’s similar generosity and thoughtfulness at play in the Alpensinfonie, where Rouvali’s tempos can also be a little surprising: a bracing ascent and a swift traversal of the flowery meadows, for example, are contrasted with other moments where he is unafraid to take his time, occasionally to the detriment of overall flow. He lets the tension drop a little at the summit, for example, but then rallies for big brass moments that are suitably thrilling – as is the rip-roaring and notably windy storm.

Likewise, the sunset lacks concentrated passion at Rouvali’s slow tempo, but then the long-breathed wind lines in ‘Ausklang’ (or ‘Quiet Settles’, as the booklet has it) are beautifully spun. The conductor makes a few vocal contributions throughout, and listeners might pick up the distant call of the lesser-spotted iPhone in ‘Calm Before the Storm’, but it all adds to the atmosphere of a handsome and ultimately rewarding performance.

The performance of Also sprach Zarathustra is notable for a truly thrilling sunrise and some exciting climaxes elsewhere, but here Rouvali’s tendency towards slower tempos is a little more problematic, and he does little to disguise the work’s episodic nature. Nevertheless, as passions swirl in the later sections – and in a deft ‘Dance Song’ – the conductor is impressive, and the ambiguities of the ‘Song of the Night Wanderer’ are captured with patience and poise.

An enjoyable release, then, and even if none of these performances is likely to dislodge anyone’s favourites in these works, they offer ample evidence of Rouvali as an interesting and far from conventional Straussian, and one well worth hearing.