Andris Nelsons has just completed his Bruckner symphony cycle with the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig and has nearly reached the end of his Shostakovich survey with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Now he and his two orchestras are united in a bumper survey of Strauss’s orchestral works, released on DG in one fell swoop. It’s a generous selection comparable to big boxes from the Staatskapelle Dresden under Rudolf Kempe and, more recently, David Zinman with the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra.

Beside the major orchestral scores, including Metamorphosen and the early Aus Italien, Nelsons includes only one concertante work, the Burleske, alongside a generous selection of music from stage works: the Suite, Fantasy and Symphonic Interludes from, respectively, Der Rosenkavalier, Die Frau ohne Schatten and Intermezzo, plus the Schlagobers Waltz and Salome’s Dance of the Seven Veils. The repertoire is equally distributed between the orchestras, with some works assigned, as the booklet explains, for historical reasons; both ensembles come together for the Festliches Präludium, a rousing, rambling conclusion to the set.

Devoted Straussians – or Nelsons fans – will be familiar with the conductor’s excellent Strauss recordings with the CBSO, released on three Orfeo CDs in the early 2010s (4/10, 6/11 and 6/14), and comparisons are instructive, especially with the shorter works. Generally speaking, we see an expansion of what was often already a leisurely approach. The opening Salome dance now breaks the 10 minute mark, for example, in a performance where things remain simply too slow for too long, despite the conductor whipping up a storm at the conclusion.

Don Juan now lasts over 20 minutes (compared with 18 in Birmingham, or, by way of comparison, less than 16 in George Szell’s classic Cleveland recording). The playing of the Gewandhausorchester is luxurious but unsurprisingly the result is somewhat flaccid, the love scenes more soporific than erotic, Don Juan himself sounding as if he’s overindulged on the patatas bravas. Similarly, although much of Till Eulenspiegel is superb, especially in the second half, there could be more energy, rumbustiousness and incisiveness early on.

The Rosenkavalier Suite is disappointing, formless and slack when compared to the superb Birmingham account, and the Intermezzo Interludes suffer from Nelsons’s slow tempos as well – he takes over eight minutes for an admittedly lovingly turned ‘Träumerei am Kamin’. The Feuersnot Love Scene is more successful (why is this not programmed more regularly?). Things improve further with a blistering account of the Burleske; Yuja Wang presumably had some say in the tempos here, and her playing – alternating breathtaking razor-sharp virtuosity and seamless lyricism – is superb, even if she doesn’t capture the same sense of mercurial wit as Bertrand Chamayou in his recent account (Warner, 6/21).

There’s more star power in Don Quixote, but whereas Wang shakes things up, Yo Yo Ma is happy to slot into Nelson’s expansive musical world in an account that comes in just shy of 46 minutes – one of the slowest performances on record since, well, Ma’s last one, also with the BSO (Sony, 7/86). There’s certainly no doubting the charisma and technique on show, but it’s a performance where soloist and orchestra seem too often to be fighting to be heard and where the unceasing intensity of Ma’s playing quickly gets tiring. There are some fine moments – the climactic battle is powerfully done, and Ma briefly finds inner calm at the start of the finale – but in general the effect is too overwrought and overblown for me.

Happily, Nelsons really hits his stride in superb accounts of Also sprach Zarathustra, Ein Heldenleben, Symphonia domestica and Eine Alpensinfonie. Here, helped by the sheer sonic splendour of his orchestras (the first two works were recorded in Leipzig, the two ‘symphonies’ in Boston), the conductor’s approach pays major dividends: there are a generosity and warmth here that are difficult to resist, and he conveys the works’ sense of symphonic structure compellingly.

Admittedly, I miss some of the sheer élan and energy of Nelsons’s Birmingham recordings, and Also sprach Zarathustra here is certainly more measured (as well as two and a half minutes slower by the clock), but the more thoughtful pacing brings its own rewards in a patient – and gloriously played – ‘Von den Hinterweltlern’ and an elegant, easy-going ‘Tanzlied’, even if I’m not totally convinced by Sebastian Breuninger’s slightly tremulous violin solos.

There’s an all-embracing confidence to Ein Heldenleben right from the start, with the battle consummately stage-managed and the conclusion movingly done (and there’s excellent solo work from Leipzig’s other First Concertmaster, Frank-Michael Erben). The all-important final minutes of Eine Alpensinfonie are superbly realised, too, with Nelsons inspiring playing of an intensity and emotional power that matches that of Karajan’s classic account – my top choice in my Collection on the work (A/17) – crowning a deeply satisfying performance. Symphonia domestica is no less satisfying, capturing just the right balance of grandiloquence and fun, with the finale offering a real showcase for a BSO on boisterously virtuoso form.

Nelsons hits the bullseye, too, with outstanding performances of Macbeth and Tod und Verklärung – the former imbued with a gritty sense of purpose and forcefulness, the latter vividly descriptive and built up with a patient sense of inevitability – and the BSO sound superb in the Frau ohne Schatten Fantasy, its strange patchwork held together as well as one could hope by Nelsons. The Gewandhausorchester’s strings imbue Metamorphosen, beautifully paced by the conductor, with a moving, melancholy glow. At the other end both of the aesthetic spectrum and of Strauss’s career, the full orchestra floods Aus Italien with plenty of warm, Mediterranean sunlight.

Throughout, DG provides sumptuous engineering that matches the mellow sonic luxuriousness of this distinguished pair of ensembles, and the whole enterprise, the flimsy documentation notwithstanding, feels reassuringly expensive, even if DG’s asking price for the seven-CD box is temptingly modest. Nelsons, as I’ve outlined, has several missteps, but there’s enough here that’s right – not to mention a great deal that’s truly outstanding – to mean that the temptation is likely to be difficult for any Straussian to resist