The wildest thing about this tour of Mussorgsky’s gallery is Ilya Repin’s portrait of the composer on the cover. It was painted in a military hospital where the alcoholic Mussorgsky had been taken to ‘dry out’. Tousle-haired, red-nosed, he has a desolate, delirious look. He died before the final sitting.

It’s probably the most famous portrait of the composer, better known than any of the artworks by his friend Viktor Hartmann, which were the inspiration for his piano suite Pictures at an Exhibition. Even in Ravel’s plush orchestration, there can still be something rugged and coarse about Pictures, so it’s a shame when a recording daubs it with a layer of varnish. The Gürzenich Orchester Köln are an extremely fine ensemble but Dmitri Kitaenko smooths away the score’s rough edges in a pedestrian account.

A little comparative listening reveals much. Take ‘Tuileries’ as a first example. We’re in Paris, enjoying the gardens by the Louvre where children are squabbling. Listen to Theodore Kuchar and the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine; barely a minute long, the woodwinds tease each other provocatively, hiding behind the skirts of the string-section governesses. Kitaenko, however, takes a plodding 1'15", the woodwinds on their best behaviour, chiming metronomically.

Or try the ‘Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks’. Kuchar’s chicks skitter about in their shells, unsteady on their feet, crashing into each other. But Kitaenko merely paints a dainty dance, a lacquered Fabergé, completely missing all the comedy. Even Valery Gergiev’s earthy account with the Mariinsky raises a smile here.

There’s plenty of weight to the sound Oehms affords the Gürzenich, which means that ‘Bydo’ ploughs along powerfully, but this is not a Pictures that need detain the gallery visitor long when there is such lively competition. The disappointment is only heightened because the rest of the disc is rather lovely. The orchestral suite from Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera The Invisible City of Kitezh is full of pastoral colour, especially the glittering ‘Wedding Procession’. Kitaenko injects ‘The Battle at Kherzhenets’ with all the energy Pictures lacks. The disc closes with a rapt watercolour of Liadov’s The Enchanted Lake.