This is not the Berlin Radio Choir’s first outing in Henze’s Ninth Symphony; they gave the world premiere in 1997 alongside the Berlin Philharmonic under Ingo Metzmacher and it is their pioneering account that was captured on EMI’s rival version. Unlike Beethoven’s Ninth, this really is a choral symphony, with the chorus employed throughout, no soloists to divert attention from the main body and relatively few passages where the orchestra carries the weight of the musical or expressive argument alone. Indeed, chorus and orchestra fuse into a single super-instrumental body, the voices functioning like another section.

Comparing the two versions, there has certainly been no diminution of the chorus’s powers over the past decade. Indeed, in this new recording their tone and range seems, if anything, more refined and attuned to Henze’s searing textures. In Janowski’s hands the textures overall are less edgy than on Metzmacher’s rival – given a more spacious, reverberant acoustic by the EMI engineers, although both versions were set down in the Berlin Philharmonie – and likewise the orchestral textures, which at times have greater suavity and beauty of tone. In such a work, of course, with its connection to the Holocaust and Anna Seghers’s novel The Seventh Cross, beauty of tone may seem of low priority but if nothing else Henze is a communicator and all his scores are designed to be heard. Darmstadt-style indifference to his audience is anathema to him. Perhaps the soaring string melody in the fifth span, The Plunge, has a touch more intensity in Metzmacher’s hands, but Janowski’s horns in the finale more than compensate.

In short, then, this is a worthy rival to EMI’s disc, competitive in all respects. In terms of sound and acoustic, I prefer Wergo’s warmer, more natural product. Highly recommended.