While Mahler and Richard Strauss were, statistically at least, the composers about whom Gerard Schwarz had most to say during his five-year Liverpool tenure, the team's Shostakovich is being documented, too. Set down as early as March 2003, the Thirteenth is in some ways a logical choice for Avie's RLPO Live strand. Under Sir Charles Groves, the band introduced the work to Western Europe some time before André Previn made it familiar to London audiences.

Schwarz is at pains to avoid the stoical trudge of many latter-day Shostakovich performances. He launches “Babi Yar” spaciously enough, but a change of gear transforms the threatening episodes of anti-Semitic abuse into something almost jaunty. Yevtushenko's homage to “Humour” is again taken at quite a lick, soloist Gidon Saks characterising well under pressure. The remaining three movements find more beauty than usual in writing that can seem merely bald. And yet, in the end, this is Shostakovich-lite. Only Saks has the right darkness of timbre, the deep perspectives of the recording exposing weaknesses elsewhere. The backwardly placed choir lack idiomatic fervour and the orchestral playing, often sensitive, needs more heft. On the plus side, the package includes full texts and translations plus helpful notes from David Fanning.

A modern alternative in even better sound comes from Mark Wigglesworth, compellingly dour on BIS (A/06). If it's authenticity you're after, one or other of Kyrill Kondrashin's pioneering versions must be considered self-recommending. His official Soviet LP, offering unsurpassed visceral bite - and a censored text - is part of an intégrale scheduled for imminent reissue on the resurgent Melodiya label.