This Prélude à L’après-midi d’un faune is a reading which distils an almost indecently sultry languor and is marked by felicitous solo work from the LSO wind principals, as well as some alluringly tangible textures (for instance, the divided strings’ zephyr-like tremolandos from around 1'10"). On the debit side, Gergiev’s predilection for swooning ritardandos every few bars soon wears thin: overall this is slightly too mannered an account to be entirely convincing.

There’s something of a stop-start feel, too, to the first two movements of La mer, where Gergiev seems happier when the music is conveying the vast immensity of the ocean than the surface activity on it. So, in “De l’aube à midi sur la mer”, the passage for divided cellos at 5'12" is choppy for all the wrong reasons, whereas the magical vista from 7'52" and majestic coda at last show what this partnership is really capable of. I could have done with greater enchantment and poetry in “Jeux de vagues”. Only in the last movement do we find everybody consistently firing on all cylinders: Gergiev whips up the opening storm into quite a frenzy, while the closing pages generate thrilling momentum and lashings of elemental excitement.

The most successful item turns out to be Jeux, a less diaphanous, more sensual and hot-blooded beast than usual, pungently characterised, always alive and always sure of its destination. The LSO respond with 100 per cent commitment, and if the playing sometimes lacks the ultimate degree of refinement (for that, you have to turn to Haitink’s wondrously poised 1979 recording), there’s no missing the communicative ardour and narrative flair which inform Gergiev’s conducting. The engineering is very good, the balance judiciously struck for the most part; indeed, the overall sound has rather more glow and atmosphere than is sometimes the case from this source.