Pierre Boulez has recorded Schoenberg's symphonic poem before, 20 years ago with the Chicago Symphony for Erato. In that performance there was still a slight coolness and studied objectivity about his approach to what is one of the composer's most lushly Romantic early scores, but there is little trace of that in this recording. It is taken from a concert with the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester in Tokyo in 2003, but has only now been released for the first time. The events of Maeterlinck's play, on which both Schoenberg's poem and Debussy's opera are based, are vividly projected. Boulez wonderfully captures the sense of the young Schoenberg's overflowing creativity and the way in which the wealth of his musical ideas can hardly be contained within the orchestral frame, and the playing of the GMJO is suitably exuberant. It makes for a thrilling experience, though neither of Boulez's accounts can quite match the sweep and sensuous detail of Herbert von Karajan's DG performance of Pelleas und Melisande from the 1970s, available nowadays at mid-price and still definitive.