For such a starry orchestra, the Berlin Philharmonic has a pretty threadbare Rachmaninov catalogue. Their only symphony cycle was with Lorin Maazel back in the 1980s, and they didn’t perform the Symphonic Dances in concert until 2010, with Simon Rattle (issued on Warner).

So a quartet of Rachmaninov’s most popular works with current chief conductor Kirill Petrenko is most welcome. They were recorded between 2020 and 2022, charting – as can be seen in the accompanying Blu ray disc – the covid pandemic: The Isle of the Dead was recorded in an empty Philharmonie, and the Second Symphony to a socially distanced audience.

The present issue retails for around £60, which is a hefty sum for just four works totalling 145 minutes. So what do you get for your money at this premium price? A premium product. In a handsome book – programme notes followed by two lengthy essays, plus a series of snowy landscape photos by Thomas Struth – are encased two SACDs, a Blu ray of the performances, including audio-only options, and a code to download high-resolution audio files. There’s also another code for seven-day access to the Berlin Phil’s streaming service, the Digital Concert Hall. So £60 is a fair sum, but the option to just purchase a two-CD set would be welcome, especially as the performances are, frankly, so wonderful.

In the interviews available to watch on the DCH (but not included on the Blu ray), Petrenko expresses his love for Rachmaninov’s music. ‘Whenever I conduct or hear or experience Rachmaninov’s music, I am reminded of my homeland, which fate unfortunately forced me to leave at an early age.’ That love is evident from the beaming smile across his face in much of the music-making. Turn to the SACDs and I swear you can still see that smile; these are big-hearted, bear-hug performances, full of passion.

The Second Symphony is given a dramatic, propulsive reading. And it’s complete. Maazel’s clean, crisp – but cool – account cuts the first-movement exposition repeat. No such cuts by Petrenko, who fires up the development section, building to a terrific climax. The playing in the Scherzo is equally powerful, while Wenzel Fuchs shapes the Adagio’s great clarinet melody far more eloquently than the prosaic solo in the earlier Berlin Phil account. Petrenko keeps the tempo flowing here – nearly two minutes swifter than Maazel – yet his pacing feels entirely natural. The finale is rousing, its conclusion triumphant.

In The Isle of the Dead, Petrenko and the Berliners dig their oars deep, lurching through Rachmaninov’s unsteady 5/8 time signature. It builds to a thunderous climax, cataclysmic chords subsiding into ‘Dies irae’ quotations, before the eerie return voyage.

In the Second Piano Concerto, the soloist is another Kirill – Gerstein – who sweeps through the score with a welcome freshness and a lack of gooey sentimentality, speedier than recent accounts by Daniil Trifonov (DG, 11/18) or Yuja Wang (10/23) and only a few seconds slower than Rachmaninov himself. That’s not to say that it’s without poetry, especially the poised Adagio sostenuto middle movement, sensitively supported by Petrenko and the orchestra. Considering it was taped in the open air, at the Waldbühne, the recorded sound is terrific, very detailed, especially the piano.

The Symphonic Dances come off terrifically. Petrenko injects these dances with rhythmic drive but without forcing the pace, slower than Maazel and Rattle in each movement apart from the finale, where he just pips Rattle. The Berlin Phil play out of their collective skins for Petrenko – there’s bite to the brass and percussion, but enormous beauty too, especially where oboe and clarinet (Jonathan Kelly and Wenzel Fuchs) entwine wistfully ahead of the saxophone solo in the first movement. Concertmaster Daishin Kashimoto plays long, sinuous lines in the sinister Andante con moto, while Petrenko whips up the sulphur in the finale, the strings’ pizzicato balalaika effects especially infectious.

All four performances are warmly recommended. I still baulk at the price, but would I cough up the readies to buy this Rachmaninov tribute? I suspect I probably would.