I won’t bury the lead. You should buy this album for the exceptional playing of Dale Barltrop, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra’s new concertmaster. A native of Brisbane, Barltrop was lured back to Australia after 18 years in North America. Richard Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben hides a sort of mini violin concerto within its bounds. The Hero’s Companion paints a musical likeness of the composer’s wife, and Barltrop’s solo playing reminds us that Pauline Strauss was a soprano. He sings every note with a warm, songful resonant voice. Barltrop takes few interpretive risks, but his thoughtfully shaped playing, both unforced and perfectly-tuned, is a great joy. After listening, I immediately repeated the track.

Heldenleben requires a strong hand on the tiller. This gloriously discursive display of self-aggrandisement can feel aimless and overlong. The most powerful recorded versions give focus and clarity to Strauss’s full range of colourful musical characters, deploying swagger, charm, snarl, passion and sassiness in the course of a thoughtfully-paced journey. But Sir But Andrew Davis seems reluctant to push his band for a wide range of musical personalities; reluctant to shape Strauss’s long, arching melodies with intensity; reluctant to bring this technicolour work to startling life. That this ‘stiff upper lip’ Heldenleben recording was taken from live performances comes as a surprise. The MSO play well, especially the woodwinds, who cover themselves in glory again and again with their beautifully turned, in-tune playing. There is a curious lack of focus in the upper strings, but the recorded sound gives them no help. The dry acoustic of Hamer Hall dulls any bloom, and this recording gives away its provenance as a radio broadcast with occasionally intrusive instrumental spotlighting.

Strauss’ opera Intermezzo is, like Ein Heldenleben, a musical self-portrait of the composer and his wife. The opera’s orchestral Interludes are diverting, attractive and characterful miniatures, but the MSO’s cautious, efficient performances miss the joy, dance, song and play of these bite-sized sweets.