What better coupling for Prokofiev’s familiar Fifth Symphony than the 21st by his closest friend? Myaskovsky’s melancholy three-part, one-movement score dates from 1940 and used to be popular in its own right on both sides of the Iron Curtain. A Chicago Symphony Orchestra commission, that prestigious ensemble eventually taped the piece in stereo under Morton Gould (RCA, 1/69); there was also a homegrown rival from David Measham and the New Philharmonia (Unicorn, 4/78 – nla). I can’t recall a recording since Evgeny Svetlanov’s (Alto, 10/08), shaggier, supercharged and some 20 per cent slower than this one. Might the composer’s ruminations win new friends under stricter Nordic management? Best not expect the work’s vaguely Waltonish element to set pulses racing these days. It’s the tunes that count and Myaskovsky’s finest melodic idea references Rimsky-Korsakov’s Antar rather than the progressive voices implied by LAWO’s suprematist packaging.

Prokofiev’s Fifth communicates readily to modern audiences but Vasily Petrenko keeps us guessing. His first movement parts company with the hell-for-leather approach typified by Mariss Jansons, guest conducting (at a similarly youthful stage of his own career) the then Leningrad Philharmonic (Chandos, 5/88). Petrenko, scarcely unique in second-guessing the second subject’s poco più mosso marking, retains a certain poise and asperity as the argument proceeds. Tension builds patiently, affirmation seldom unclouded. Some may miss the saturated strings and outsize tam-tam of Herbert von Karajan’s Berlin Philharmonic (DG, 6/69). Then again, Oslo’s lean, tensile violin desks rarely obscure the grainier contributions of woodwind and tuba. That the discourse never succumbs to bombast aligns it with the disquieting world of the Sixth, which the team has set down for future release.

The Fifth’s inner movements combine absolute precision with real emotive clout. The return of the Scherzo, skulking in at a snail’s pace, redefines ‘grotesque’, after which the players find something searing in the almost-formulaic funeral march and battleground effects at the height of the slow movement; its ‘empty ballroom’ fade is beautifully judged. No surprise by now that the finale is more than a celebration of high jinks, although it is that too. Prokofiev’s closing whirl of mechanised ‘rejoicing’ is projected with splenetic intensity. Even the most celebrated orchestras can go into meltdown when the texture suddenly implodes as if to expose a compromised and fretful interior world. Not so the superbly drilled Oslo Philharmonic. Only the bass-shy recorded sound lets the side down a little, neither as translucent nor as glamorous as it might be. Or was that perhaps the point?