Rachmaninov’s Third Symphony is the shared work in these otherwise dissimilar offerings. Valery Gergiev’s view is dark and stormy, his relatively slow pacing undercut by so many lugubrious inflections that the piece loses its overall shape. Some will admire the passionate Mahlerian outburst at the heart of his first movement, relishing the extreme contrasts of tempo and mood in the tripartite second, but the finale’s final flourish, delivered with yet another awkward gear change, could not come soon enough for this listener. Part of the problem is the shallowness of the acoustic. London’s Barbican Hall is always a tricky venue for recording and here, with oddly prominent woodwind and overbearing timps, we seem to be allocated a particularly bad seat. Even if you regard Rachmaninov’s Third as a vaguely modernist, neo-classical departure (and it’s clear that the conductor does not), the music needs more than LSO Live’s attenuated wisp of string sonority to make it sing.

Paavo Järvi is no speed merchant, and some might find his performance comparatively tame even if his technical control and formidable sense of logic are never in doubt. To clinch the deal, the band is made to sound far more voluptuous than its rival. This is so despite the fact that the live recording was made in the Salle Pleyel, subsequently abandoned by the orchestra in favour of higher-tech suburban quarters. Granted, Järvi’s pay-off is almost as mannered as Gergiev’s. Neither Previn (EMI, 8/77) nor Jansons (EMI, 12/93) interpolates a rallentando, the latter’s zippier approach throughout signalled by his elimination of the first-movement exposition repeat. Both Gergiev and Järvi provide the repeat, and I will certainly be revisiting the fine detailing of Järvi’s individualistic Parisian winds, never indulged at the expense of forward momentum.

Gergiev’s coupling is a Balakirev obscurity of mainly specialist interest. Järvi offers a slightly puzzling jumble of early and late Rachmaninov stretched over two sound carriers, the middle years being neglected save for the Vocalise (for which the booklet provides too early a composition date). Given in its purely orchestral guise, that piece is placed at the end of a second disc which starts with the composer’s swansong and proceeds by way of The Rock, which Tchaikovsky had admired in 1893. Perhaps it doesn’t matter when Järvi’s carefully prepared readings have such character and flair. The conductor attempts some spooky hesitations in the Symphonic Dances’ unnerving waltz movement, and he is sentimentally interventionist in the finale before revving up for one last climax (interrupted only by Rachmaninov’s unexpected restatement of his Orthodox chant at a not easily judged slower tempo). The concluding gong stroke is cut short. There must have been copious applause in the hall, but on both these releases the presence of an audience has been meticulously expunged.