In his Fifteenth Symphony, Shostakovich confronts us with a list of irreconcilable, curiouser-and-curiouser “whys”. Why start your symphony with a jingle more suited to advertising soap powder; why end with an eco system of nervy, tick-tocking percussion instruments, as though melody and harmony have drained away; why those infamous references to Rossini’s William Tell Overture; why Wagner in the second movement; why a dark descent towards disembodied woodblock taps and fragmenting pitched-percussion lines? Why is the only thing that feels “real” in this symphony the artificiality of borrowed material?

The problem with Mikhail Pletnev’s approach is that he fields the notes with such a ruthlessly clean bat he manages to miss the music. The opening flute solo sounds trivial rather than knowingly trivial, and the accompanying string “oom-pahs” lack slapstick or thrust. Pletnev tucks the first Rossini quote in neatly, as though it would be uncharitable to ask why Shostakovich has put it there. The opening brass chords in the Adagio are tepid, the fatalistic timpani strikes almost comically limp. The Scherzo is cautiously sluggish and the climax section in the finale is hammed up shamelessly, but this only emphasises how directionless progress towards this stirring point of arrival has been. The recorded sound has impressive depth, but every singalong grunt from the podium is luridly audible.

The coupling is music Shostakovich wrote for a 1931 production of Hamlet (not to be confused with his later film score) and it’s an entertaining enough collection of trademark pastiches – not so entertaining, however, that the sins of Pletnev’s poor Fifteenth are absolved.