A genuine BBC Legend this. We tend to think of Kyrill Kondrashin as the most “authentic” pioneer of Shostakovich’s long-suppressed Fourth Symphony, except that the recordings of this work by Gennady Rozhdestvensky (Olympia, 5/89, and Russian Disc, 1/94 – both nla) are no less fine. Where Kondrashin offers total commitment and unremitting intensity, Rozhdestvensky proves peculiarly adept at teasing out the score’s strange, subversive elements.

Here, giving the work its first hearing outside the Soviet bloc during a large-scale Shostakovich retrospective at the 1962 Edinburgh Festival, Rozhdestvensky conducts with greater urgency than usual, galvanising the Philharmonia into a coruscating display. Small wonder the piece so wowed contemporary critics. The inclusion of an edited and reordered Katerina Izmaylova Suite, performed a few days earlier, reminds us that this was also the period in which Shostakovich at last secured official acceptance of his opera The Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, albeit in bowdlerised form. Western commentators were understandably less kind about the Twelfth Symphony which featured on the same programme.

BBC Legends’ festive filler is an LSO relay from 1985, dangerously like a non sequitur in this context. It also betrays a more worrying aspect of the Rozhdestvensky phenomenon. While the rendition has more than enough verve and spirit to delight the audience at London’s Barbican Hall, you may find it too sloppy for repeated listening. Was the maestro, who prefers to interact with his musicians in a rostrum-free zone, perhaps disinclined to spoil the fun with too much rehearsal? The sound, genuine stereo throughout, is shrill and over-immediate in the Usher Hall tapings yet always listenable. Applause is retained.