If some composers generate floods of discs when one of their anniversaries comes around, the centenary of Scriabin’s death has not been notably inundated, although Yevgeny Sudbin’s wonderfully idiomatic performance of the Piano Concerto (BIS, 3/15) and Mikhail Pletnev’s coupling of the First Symphony and The Poem of Ecstasy have handsomely attested to the advantages of quality over quantity. Now, two rival discs of The Poem of Ecstasy (or Symphony No 4) and The Divine Poem (Symphony No 3) have been released in the same month, Vasily Petrenko’s performances with the Oslo Philharmonic having been recorded in February this year, Valery Gergiev’s with the LSO stemming from concerts at London’s Barbican in 2014.

Petrenko has the distinct edge here. Where Gergiev’s approach in The Divine Poem, while passionate and emotionally highly charged, can sound generalised, Petrenko is far more alert to the music’s shifting moods, pacings and dynamics, finding expressive potential in those evanescent, volatile gestures that make the substance of the symphony at once so rich and so restless. It’s not that you necessarily expect a conductor to fix precisely in musical terms what Scriabin meant by such markings as ‘avec trouble et effroi, de plus en plus audacieux’ or ‘orageux’, but they do tell you something about the music’s febrile nature, its startling spurts of energy, its ominous radiance, its fusion of momentum and, as Scriabin would say, ‘ravissement’. Petrenko can build up a pulsating climax in the finale along with the best of them, as indeed can Gergiev. It is simply that, throughout The Divine Poem, Petrenko, with his refined attention to texture and detail, makes the score sound so much more intriguing, so much more unusual.

In The Poem of Ecstasy Petrenko and Gergiev have Pletnev’s interpretation to compete with, a performance of truly ecstatic headiness. Nor can one ignore Svetlanov’s 1996 version (Warner, 5/07) or Muti’s Philadelphia recording of 1990 (EMI, 7/91 – nla), both of them part of complete Scriabin symphony series and, in their different ways, capturing the music’s spirit.

In the great scheme of things it’s a minor quibble, maybe, but the first chord in Gergiev’s performance is not quite unanimous. As an interpretation, however, it works well in its flexibility and in the mix of seductive languor, nervy animation and healthy solo trumpet aspiration. Again, though, Petrenko is the more impressive: his performance has all those qualities but there just seems to be a sharper focus and a keener ear for the intricacies of Scriabin’s world of sound.