Hans Zender’s radical reimagining of Schubert’s Winterreise may have baffled critics when it came out in 1994, but three decades on it stands as one of the most vivid and inventive commentaries on the song cycle ever created. His “composed interpretation” – not merely an arrangement – treats Schubert’s music as a living organism, expanding and distorting its emotional palette through a 26-player ensemble that draws on bass clarinet, contrabassoon, accordion, guitar, massed melodicas, and an arsenal of percussion. 

This recording was made in conjunction with a staged performance at London’s Southbank Centre featuring the ever intrepid Nicholas Collon and his Aurora Orchestra, a plucky ensemble that has been known to play The Rite of Spring from memory. The soloist, whose stage performance was as theatrically daring as anything I’ve seen, is the remarkable British tenor Allan Clayton.

With or without staging, the score reveals an astonishingly detailed landscape of colour, atmosphere and psychological tension, brought into sharp focus by Clayton and the musicians, each of whom is essentially a soloist. 

From the outset, Zender’s sound world asserts...