After his avian double bill of The Firebird and The Golden Cockerel with the RLPO (Onyx, 1/19), Vasily Petrenko has now recorded a complete disc devoted to Rimsky-Korsakov with his Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra for the Norwegian label LAWO Classics. The beguiling Sheherazade continues to be a great concert warhorse, but although she was the darling of the LPO era, studio recordings have been distinctly thin on the ground since Sasha Goetzel’s invigorating account with the Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic in 2014.

Petrenko has a keen ear for drama and his Sheherazade is full of dash and derring-do, often with tempos to match. There is plenty of momentum to Sinbad’s ship and a lively storm and shipwreck in the outer movements. Petrenko doesn’t hang about in ‘The Young Prince and the Young Princess’ either, lacking in languor, although the central episode has the princess’s palanquin jogging along perkily. Goetzel draws a wider spectrum of colours from his Turkish orchestra, enhancing the already intoxicating perfume of Rimsky’s orchestration by having Sheherazade accompanied by a qanun rather than the usual harp in her recitatives. Oslo concertmaster Elise Båtnes is a sweet-toned storyteller, though, bringing great delicacy to her solos. Petrenko is more relaxed in ‘The Tale of the Kalender Prince’, allowing his woodwind soloists time to express their co-narrations, even if the bassoon and clarinet sound a little veiled in a recording that doesn’t always allow bags of detail to emerge, although the Oslo Concert Hall isn’t as reverberant as the Borusan’s Istanbul venue.

The other two Rimsky works were performed by the orchestra in concert just before these sessions took place in May 2019. The Capriccio espagnol is immaculate, if lacking some Mediterranean earthiness, although I loved the poise of the flautist in the ‘Scena e canto gitano’ (track 4, 1'22"), which made it sound like a forerunner of the Ballerina in Stravinsky’s Petrushka. That pearly flute also shines in the Russian Easter Festival Overture, where the recording’s big-boned sound produces plenty of power and permits all the percussion glitter required in the joyful finale.