Also available in this series are Volume 1 and Volume 2.

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Neeme Järvi's sensibly paced but not all that wonderfully played Metamorphosen won't win any awards, but his Aus Italien delivers the goods in spades, the best version since Kempe's. He simply takes the piece by the scruff of the neck and plays the living daylights out of it, whether drawing out the gorgeous string textures of the opening or whipping through the Roman Ruins and the folk festivities of Naples. In general, Järvi's Strauss tone poem series for Chandos remains seriously underrated and undervalued. It contains spectacular performances of Macbeth, Death and Transfiguration, An Alpine Symphony, Sinfonia Domestica, Also Sprach Zarathustra, and Ein Heldenleben, and none of the others is less than very good. Aus Italien was the odd man out, omitted from the two multi-disc, mid-price sets into which they were all repackaged, so it's great to welcome this sensationally recorded performance back into the catalog. If you ever felt that this work consists largely of second-rate Strauss, Järvi should change your mind.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com