As Marin Alsop has remarked, Prokofiev consistently bucked prevailing trends, whether political, musical or inter-personal, so it is appropriate that her ongoing symphony cycle should reveal an idiosyncratic take on the composer’s world. While she is often credited with a flair for rhythm and colour, it is the broad, unforced naturalness of these readings which stakes out a distinctive territory. Also unusual is the decision to incorporate a slew of shorter rarities.

Sadly, it’s not all plain sailing in this third instalment. Alsop’s temperate Classical Symphony has many delightful touches – the finale has just the right kind of fizz and sparkle – but, with wind tuning less than spot-on, the work’s opening flourish should have been remade. Nor, later, did I care for the extra kink in the phrasing of the Gavotte. At least Alsop never galumphs as Valery Gergiev is wont to do in his complete cycle.

Closer to Scriabin and Myaskovsky than much of Prokofiev’s subsequent output, an atmospheric miniature dating from 1910 is placed between the symphonies. The performance of Dreams is persuasive enough even if Vladimir Ashkenazy’s 1985 recording is tauter, his Cleveland Orchestra predictably unimpeachable.

In the Second Symphony Alsop’s relatively cautious manner may win new converts to what Prokofiev described as music of ‘iron and steel’. Wherever possible its substance is brought closer than usual to the more lyrical vein he explored in much of his later music, its deviations carefully dovetailed into the whole. Stick with the likes of Gergiev if you expect to hear the first movement as the ultimate ‘earquake’ experience and prefer the second maximally projected. Its main theme acquires a throbbing romantic fervour once the LSO strings get hold of it. Alsop’s São Paulo section remains chaste and pensive even when the idea returns to (almost) round off the work.

A word on the quality of the competing sound recordings. Gergiev’s complete survey was captured live, close miking emphasising edginess, angularity and the mock-Soviet heft of his British band. Naxos’s sonic perspective is more relaxed, complementing the São Paulo Symphony’s generally lighter sonority – many of its excellent émigré violinists are Russian trained. A detailed booklet-note from Gramophone’s Richard Whitehouse replaces the more basic recycled material accompanying earlier volumes.