This is the second release in Kirill Karabits’s Prokofiev symphony cycle, opening with the modernistic Second (1924 25) in a realisation of unrivalled clarity and balance, closely observed by the microphones. When Karabits spoke to the audience prior to a performance at the Lighthouse, Poole, he made much of the ear-lashing to come. The recording feels less confrontational. Should you prefer the music redder in tooth and claw, try sampling alternative views from the older complete sets. There’s Gergiev and the LSO, foregrounding timpani and percussion, or the classic Rozhdestvensky account (1962) in which Soviet-era brass ravage the texture like buzz-saws. The second-movement theme and variations is in any case more eclectic in style, mixing if not exactly matching just about all the Prokofievs we have ever known.

Marin Alsop, who couples the first two symphonies in her own Prokofiev series, is arguably too urbane in No 2 but her genial approach suits the ubiquitous Classical better than Karabits’s cooler manner. For all its nimble virtuosity, his rather lean-sounding band sounds a little lost in what has become an ampler acoustic, woodwind overly recessed. The outer movements, intriguingly linear, expose secondary string lines rarely heard, only there’s less in the way of forward momentum. While by no means infallible, Alsop’s players sound as if they are enjoying themselves more. It’s a pity that neither rendition permits the harmonic displacements of Prokofiev’s Gavotte to speak for themselves.

The present disc runs to nearly 80 minutes through the inclusion of a brace of extras. Alsop has just Dreams (1910) – but then her asking price is that much lower. Karabits’s biggest offering is the easy-going Sinfonietta (1909 and subsequently revised). Riccardo Muti recorded its five appealing movements in the 1970s but it has otherwise tended to remain the province of specialist conductors from the former Soviet bloc. Autumnal Sketch is rarer still, a seven-minute evocation contemporaneous with Dreams, composed when Prokofiev and Myaskovsky were apprentice composers in thrall to Scriabin and the Rachmaninov of The Isle of the Dead. Recommended despite minor reservations.