Quietly and without fuss, Moscow-born Finnish-resident Dima Slobodeniouk has been rising through the ranks with posts in Galicia and Lahti and a growing catalogue of recordings. Specialist repertoire and concerto accompaniments predominate and he has already made his debut with the Berlin Philharmonic, choosing Prokofiev’s formidable Second Symphony. As the present disc confirms, he has a distinctive way with the composer, prizing lucidity over clamour.

In the ‘Four Portraits and a Dénouement’ from The Gambler, his refined approach is refreshing. These days the parent opera is more familiar to Western audiences than this character-led orchestral compendium as recorded by Neeme Järvi (Chandos, 9/90). Patched together like Prokofiev’s Third Symphony, its five movements are a sequence of recomposed mini tone poems rather than a conventional suite of highlights. Järvi concentrates on extracting heavyweight string tone and Soviet-style rasp from his Scottish players; Slobodeniouk in Lahti probes deeper, finding shadowy intimations of Martinů and Messiaen in Pauline’s portrait. That said, the ‘Dénouement’ (not in fact the end of the opera) was unarguably more exciting in Dundee! That the work contains no extended arias need not preclude memorable invention.

The Stone Flower is one of those oddly placid late Prokofiev scores which hostile commentators are inclined to dismiss out of hand. The melodic material lacks the memorability of Romeo and Juliet, perhaps to be expected given that the composer was gravely ill, short of funds and ideologically under a cloud in the late 1940s. At the same time, the ballet preserves some of Cinderella’s fascination with delicate, offbeat sonorities and its harmonic language is less predictable when the plot gives Prokofiev the excuse (or political cover) to try something new. Gianandrea Noseda’s version of the complete work (Chandos, 6/03) is inclined to lugubriousness and for non-specialists the present selection may suffice. Slobodeniouk draws mainly from suites Prokofiev extracted before the project reached the stage, mixing and matching available material. Common to both recordings is the evocative Prologue with its metallic trio of trumpets depicting the Mistress of the Copper Mountain. Under Noseda the music can threaten to lose its bearings. Slobodeniouk preserves more sense of line. There is at times a certain pallor but the coda of the Gypsy Fantasy takes off at a tremendous lick.

Between music from these contrasting theatre pieces Slobodeniouk slips in another obscurity, the early Autumnal or Autumnal Sketch which in places sounds like an effort by Prokofiev’s friend, Nikolay Myaskovsky. It was written when the two were apprentice composers in thrall to Scriabin and the Rachmaninov of The Isle of the Dead. For good or ill neither Järvi (Chandos, 2/91) nor Slobodeniouk dawdles here.

The package includes attractive artwork, a booklet note from Andrew Huth and a surround-sound option facilitated by the finely focused acoustic of Lahti’s Sibelius Hall.