When it comes to the First Cello Concerto, the most obvious recent point of comparison is Alisa Weilerstein with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra under Pablo Heras-Casado. Both Weilerstein and Xavier Phillips studied the piece with Rostropovich and you hear rather more stylistic echoes in his performance than you do in hers, though the playing of Les Dissonances (‘the meeting of disparate worlds’) under their Artistic Director David Grimal lacks the vivid inflections and dynamic hairpins that characterise Heras-Casado’s approach, even within the first minute. The Moderato second movement benefits from this level of restraint; but, good though the cadenza is, it doesn’t light up the sky quite as vividly as Weilerstein’s high-octane delivery does, like a burning bridge to the gruelling finale. At times Phillips and Grimal verge on sounding polite, and although their production is trim and well ordered, something of the music’s innate sense of protest has been lost.

As to the Fifth Symphony, the very opening doesn’t augur especially well: a gentle attack and violins that are perilously close to sounding ‘period’ – quiet, pale and, initially, with no vibrato, though that’s not for the duration. Gergiev and his Mariinsky forces are more impressive, and don’t even think of using Kondrashin, Haitink or Mravinsky as comparisons. No contest there I’m afraid. The movement’s dramatic centre (from 7'40") sounds like chamber music writ large, though as with the concerto what’s lacking is a sense of urgency, of desperation, as if the music is obliged to bow to the very tyranny it’s trying to escape. The Allegretto is very good, nevertheless, and the Largo’s purity will have some takers, although I’m not one of them: I much prefer a more impassioned approach. This overall lack of bombast works best in the finale, which offers more food for thought than usual, the central section especially.

So, an interesting – and often transparent – approach to both the symphony and the concerto, well worth sampling, certainly if you normally find Shostakovich’s bigger-scale music excessively dark or overbearing. But for me there are just too many compromises along the way, and Shostakovich is never about compromise. Presentation, annotation and sound are all excellent.