Inbal’s Shostakovich cycle is an acquired taste. Some listeners find only a pale facsimile of the original scores – denatured by design and diminished by thin-toned strings. Others would claim that Inbal has purged the music of superfluous rhetoric and purely local colour, relocating it in a collective symphonic tradition. The present coupling is par for the course, naturally recorded with the kind of dynamic range which ensures that climaxes register impressively despite the reluctance to imperil beauty of sound with incisive, Mravinsky-style articulation.
I have to say that, for all its incidental beauties, this Sixth did strike me as a trifle insipid. Its very opening gestures seem undermotivated and, while the first movement unfolds placidly and not without a certain logic, the Viennese orchestra are plainly fallible. In the second movement Allegro, Inbal seems periodically drawn to the slower tempo favoured by such conductors as Bernstein and Previn but the effect here is inconsistent, not to say rhythmically unstable. The finale is not so much lacklustre as leisurely and there is some nicely pointed playing to bring the music closer than usual to the Prokofiev of the Classical Symphony. The Twelfth is launched without fervour and you may be tempted to conclude that such threadbare thematic material can only be disguised by Mravinsky’s blatant overdramatization. That said, Inbal’s performance gathers credibility as it proceeds. If nothing sounds truly Russian (the strings certainly need to be stronger), his side-drum at least has the appropriate edge.
To sum up: Haitink is a safer and cheaper option if you prefer Western sonorities in these scores, Mravinsky self-recommending as a piece of history. Inbal’s admirers will not be disappointed: these are soft-grained, unflashy readings that improve on repetition. The conductor’s vocal exhortations won’t bother them.'