This third release in Kirill Karabits’s Prokofiev symphony cycle will not disappoint those following its progress. Even if competition could scarcely be more ferocious in the Fifth, pairing it with the original version of the Fourth has few precedents. Valery Gergiev has almost the same coupling (bar the Scriabinesque Dreams) in his live LSO series from London’s Barbican Hall, only that disc was never made available independently. Unexpectedly, perhaps, it is the Fifth that receives the most convincing treatment in Poole’s Lighthouse. Karabits’s view, like Litton’s, is mainstream in the best sense, neither inclined to rush in the Gergiev manner nor seeming too placid as Alsop sometimes can. For all that Karabits points up the slow movement’s contrasting blocks of material with marked tempo shifts, there are no incidental agogic distortions. True, the orchestra is rather thinly upholstered, but this allows for a cleaner, more linear texture than is customary in this score and the conducting avoids the impression of emotional reticence left by Oramo’s similarly aerated account. Should you want to hear what Prokofiev’s tuba is doing in the Fifth, Karabits is your man.

Nothing wrong, either, with his interpretation of its rarely heard, theatrically indebted predecessor. Then again, this is a work the orchestra can’t have encountered before and, in truth, the playing is a little strained, not least in the high-lying string-writing. Turn to the ace sight-readers of Gergiev’s LSO and the whole thing flows more convincingly, despite blunter sound and the conductor’s intrusive vocalisations. Karabits remakes the music through his typically sensitive and ingenious exposure of inner parts, but I’m not sure how helpful this is if key lyrical lines are undersold.

Don’t let me put you off Karabits’s deglamourised view. His rhythms are always commendably taut and true, and the disc comes with intriguing interview material in which the conductor refuses to view the Fifth as other than essentially optimistic. The sound recording, while immediate and transparent, is not wholly natural, hall resonance prolonging Prokofiev’s grander resolutions.