Yannick Nézet-Séguin is one of the busiest conductors on the international classical music circuit. Criss-crossing between Montreal and Rotterdam, Philadelphia and the Met, he’s much in demand. Between 2008 and 2014, he was principal guest conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and it’s with the LPO that he features on this all-Dvořák two-disc release. The Sixth Symphony captures his LPO debut from 2007, while Othello and the Seventh were taken from a concert last year.

Nézet-Séguin has a tremendous feel for Dvořák. His conducting was one of the few merits of the Royal Opera’s shocker of a Rusalka in 2012. There’s a tremendous sense of drama in his reading of Othello, a terrific symphonic poem. Dvořák had seen Verdi’s Otello in Prague in 1888 and the shadowy woodwinds and sepulchral basses conjure up the atmosphere of Verdi’s Act 4 opening. Nézet-Séguin builds tension and knows when to turn the dramatic screw.

The Sixth Symphony is in sunny D major, shot through with unbuttoned joy. Nézet-Séguin finds the same degree of relaxed happiness as Rafael Kubelík with the Berlin Philharmonic. Like Kubelík, he ignores the first-movement exposition repeat (not a huge loss). If I prefer István Kertész, who observes the repeat, it’s because he drives the movement on with greater bucolic energy (and whooping LSO horns). The Adagio is lovingly shaped and unhurried, with airy flute and rounded horn tone. The furiant rhythms of the Scherzo are driven along as crisply as Kertész, with some cheeky woodwind solos in the Trio section, while the finale emerges from Brahmsian warmth to something far more boisterous.

Joy and sunlight are far away in the opening to Dvořák’s Seventh and here Nézet-Séguin and the LPO strings capture a sense of dark brooding, happily dissipated by the woodwinds. Again, Kertész has a greater sense of purpose in this opening movement, as well as in the Poco adagio second, where Nézet-Séguin stretches the long melodies possibly too far. The Scherzo is unforced and the pastoral Trio dances along with a charming lilt. There’s an injection of nervous energy in the stormy finale, the LPO brass at their incisive best, until Nézet Séguin drives the coda hard to a triumphant close. Enthusiastic applause is retained, deservedly so.