Strauss: An Alpine Symphony album review – monumental work’s mystic vision guides Petrenko

This is the third recording of Richard Strauss’s monumental tone poem to appear in the last year, and in some respects the most interesting. Vasily Petrenko and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra adopt an expansive view, taking three minutes longer to clamber up and down the composer’s musical mountain than Edward Gardner or Nicholas Collon’s recent recordings. And yet nothing here seems to drag its feet.

The natural world through which the intrepid hikers pass may be the emphasis of the ascent, but it’s the mystic vision and elegy on the summit where the conductor’s focus lies – that and the uneasy darkness into which Strauss’s day of thrills and spills ultimately descends.

There’s a softness to the nocturnal opening that hints at mysteries to come, while a sense of awe pervades the headstrong plunge into the woods. Yet the pastoral episodes – the waterfall, the alpine meadow with its shepherds and cowbells, and especially the bellowing horns and thundering percussion of the tumultuous storm – are painted with an impressionist’s eye for detail.

Recorded at the Royal Albert Hall in 2025, it’s a work that really suits the auditorium’s resonant acoustic and is presented here in spectacular sound by Mike Hatch and his team at Floating Earth. At 53 minutes, though, a filler might have been nice.