Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet has fared well on disc, with multiple recordings of the suites and latterly of the complete ballet too. Although there remains a case for sticking with Gennady Rozhdestvensky’s pioneering version, the most characterful of them all, or with Lorin Maazel’s 1973 Cleveland account, the best-played, Valery Gergiev’s recent release on LSO Live was widely felt to offer the ideal compromise.

Now Vladimir Ashkenazy joins him in that select group of conductors who have set down the full-length score more than once. Their affection for it is communicated in markedly different ways. Gergiev’s theatrical instincts encourage him to energise the writing with results some find overstated. With Ashkenazy the notes are allowed their own space, sometimes too much, not that timings ever tell the whole story. He takes 5'51" over the familiar ‘Dance of the Knights’, Gergiev just 5'11". ‘Juliet’s Funeral’, the penultimate number, is 5'44" under Gergiev, 7'14" in Sydney. The Australians have a richer, deeper hall resonance, giving a surprisingly analytical focus to the bass as well as echoing the nostalgic warmth and sincerity Ashkenazy brings to the ballet. The dynamic range is wider in London’s crowded Barbican Hall, where Gergiev’s more volatile sonorities can recede into inaudibility when not bludgeoning the listener.

Lest the Sydney Symphony strike you as unlikely casting in this music, I should mention that the ensemble has form, having provided live accompaniment to the 1966 film starring Rudolf Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn (in 2004 under Carl Davis). Still, there are moments when its playing feels earthbound. The central ‘Love Dance’ surely works better with the LSO’s more urgent churning and soaring. On the plus side, Ashkenazy deploys a viola d’amore, unavailable for his previous Decca recording, and he has a chamber organ in the ‘Balcony Scene’ where Gergiev resorts to solo strings. While the Sydney Symphony’s own-label packaging is more opulent than LSO Live’s, its annotator is less reliable. We begin with the assertion that ‘No orchestra in its right mind would perform Prokofiev’s complete Romeo and Juliet ballet in the concert hall’. Perhaps it is the LSO’s determination to prove the contrary that makes me incline to Gergiev’s feistier view.