Joan Rodgers's singing...has bags of personality and that's the main thing...Tone-poem and elegy both start well, but have their problematic interpretative moments...The central sweep, though, is clear and impressive, the Strasbourg strings remarkably fine.

Don Juan has been played and recorded so often that it might seem impossibile to conjure the music into sounding as fresh as the day it was written. Yet it happens here, with a conductor-and-orchestra team that delivers sweeping panache, needlepoint precision, and vividly characterised solo playing (superb horns!). In the brooding, autumnal Metamorphosen, the quality of the Strasbourg string-playing is if anything higher.

The account of Don Juan cannot be faulted: ideally paced, with a bold contribution from the horns and strings which are virile and rich. The tension in Metamorphosen, although not low, is a little inconsistent but reaches an impressively passionate climax with good, full-bodied recording. The conductor also provides highly sympathetic accompaniments for his soloist, Joan Rodgers.

Jan Latham-Koenig and his responsive Strasbourg forces reveal a Don Juan of sharper contrasts than usual. The seduction scenes smoulder as dangerous nocturnal idylls rather than indulgent interludes...An appealing vigour renews understanding of what a bolt from the blue this work must have sounded to its first audience...how wonderful to hear Joan Rodgers in such resplendent voice in her choice of early songs.

This lusciously rewarding programme opens with an admirably ardent, appropriately cocksure but always musically disciplined Don Juan, played with panache by the Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg...[Metamorphosen] is beautifully played, finely shaped and exquisitely internally balanced.