Here is a tempting proposition for collectors who wish to explore Rachmaninov’s shorter orchestral works having acquired his symphonies without makeweights. Not all these pieces were considered worth publishing or even playing in the composer’s lifetime, but at least two, The Rock and the more familiar Isle of the Dead, are substantial achievements. Mikhail Pletnev and his Russian National Orchestra may be lither and subtler in both, but their performances are coupled with Symphonies 1 and 2 and I can imagine some listeners actually preferring Polyansky’s broader canvases for all the occasional rawness of execution.

Prince Rostislav is by no means easy to find elsewhere. A substantial student tone poem based on a legend revisited in a Tolstoy ballad, it is dedicated to Arensky, one of Rachmaninov’s teachers, and sounds (mostly) like Tchaikovsky. The scenario, typically gloomy, takes places at the bottom of the River Dnieper, although the drowned prince is left with the dubious consolation of its water nymphs. Polyansky’s is a weightier, more authentic option than its Naxos rival, awkwardly paired with the ubiquitous Rach Three. I have not heard the new version on BIS, as recently commended by Edward Greenfield, but that comes yoked with yet another version of the First Symphony. Polyansky’s programme also usefully takes in the modest Scherzo in D minor, Rachmaninov’s earliest surviving orchestral score which dates from as early as 1888.

One word of warning. I should mention that Polyansky’s grand manner is emphasised by a production style that can transform the spacious acoustic of the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatoire into the sonic semblance of an aircraft hangar. Since the booklet notes credit the conductor with production duties this must be the effect he wants. Less than helpfully, too, the notes describe the pieces in an order other than that in which they appear on the disc. Still the playing time is generous and this should indeed prove a useful gap-filler.