As with Paavo Järvi’s recent Prokofiev coupling (3/08), it’s the makeweight that strikes sparks. Veljo Tormis is mostly familiar as a composer of resourceful vocal music but his early Overture No 2, Sibelian Shostakovich à la Tubin, is well worth the occasional outing. It gets a powerful, intense performance here. The main work is less persuasive, sometimes merely listenable when it needs to be riveting. Again the contrast with Neeme Järvi (Chandos, 3/89) suggests that where the father is intent on transmitting the score’s inner life the son sets greater store by polishing its surfaces. His interpretation of the first movement relaxes tensions for the Tchaikovskian second subject whose dance-like, Jewish character is made unusually explicit in the recapitulation. There is fine playing there and elsewhere, including notable contributions from a forwardly balanced principal bassoon, but I missed the cumulative power of a Karajan (DG, 1/69R, 3/82R) or a Haitink (Decca, 10/77R and LPO, A/08), let alone the hysterical edge imparted by maestros of the Soviet era. The laid-back orchestral sonority patented by Telarc in Cincinnati seems a little bland for Shostakovich – the finale might reasonably be described as dapper – and there are passages where the playing itself seems underpowered, with horns and brasses unhelpfully pinched. The booklet-notes don’t help, at once opaque and naive. While aficionados will be undeterred, Shostakovich’s “battleship grey” gravitas may not be Paavo’s thing. Or perhaps he is just doing too much.