Once Prokofiev resolved to remake himself as a Soviet composer in the 1930s his Second Symphony (1924 25) provided a convenient Aunt Sally. ‘Neither I nor the audience understood anything in it’, or so he would claim after quitting the Paris music scene. Only recently have musicologists and interpreters been taking a more balanced view. Franz Welser-Möst might seem an unlikely recruit to the cause but he has now ventured beyond Prokofiev’s easy-option symphonies to champion the Third (7/20) and Sixth (in concert). As might be expected, his is another ‘revisionist’ Second that majors on textural decongestion rather than paint-stripping cacophony, for all that his own commentary attempts to associate Prokofiev’s speculative language with the mechanised warfare of global conflict. The composer (who had it in mind to recast the score) would surely have been gratified by the Gallic elegance of a first movement in which fantastical points of colour abound and fluttering woodwind accretions can actually be heard. For once everything is ben articulato as marked. Welser-Möst’s way with the second movement, a sometimes eloquent, sometimes distracted theme and variations, also sounds more focused than usual, racier tempos eschewed in the interests of clarity and continuity. Its lovely melody (solo oboe then first violins) is pitched midway between Vladimir Jurowski’s chaste restraint and Andrew Litton’s fuller Romanticism, to name just two rivals finally out-finessed not in Cleveland but Miami. Welser-Möst’s lustrous recording was captured on tour in that city’s Knight Concert Hall shortly before the shock of Covid. What’s missing is the raw explosive charge of Gennady Rozhdestvensky in Moscow (HMV Melodiya, 5/69 – nla).

Schnittke’s Concerto for piano and strings (1979) is another provocative mix of tonality and dissonance which older listeners may associate with Rozhdestvensky and Viktoria Postnikova (Erato, 8/92 – nla). Its ‘polystylistic’ juggling of archetypes benefits from the drama of live performance but there have been plenty of audio-only recordings. The one by Ralf Gothóni and Virtuosi di Kuhmo is considered notably euphonious and ‘classical’. Tauter still and sonically drier, Yefim Bronfman and friends never let the invention sprawl into somnambulism. While the mash-up of idioms – whether ironic, anguished, profound or profoundly silly – includes some cod Prokofiev, a bigger role is played by disembodied Alberti figuration and horror-film atmospherics. The source of the recording is a Severance Hall rendition prepared expressly for digital dissemination mid-pandemic in October 2020. If the programme appeals, this exceptionally well played, luxuriously packaged own-label release should prove much more than a souvenir.