There are no surprises here. Maxim is as ever a serious, dedicated but perhaps rather plain interpreter of music in which others have found more in the way of passion, colour and contrast. Unlike Kondrashin, he does not rush; nor does he apply the greasepaint in the Rozhdestvensky manner: the clear articulation of individual notes is achieved at the expense of subjective inflexion. Those attracted by the conductor’s understated approach will find the main work very satisfying. Orchestral sonority is relatively shallow so that woodwind lines poke through, but the first movement has genuine breadth and a sustained ‘philosophical’ atmosphere. While the players have obviously been dutifully rehearsed, there are some problems of co-ordination for the strings in the Scherzo (track 2, 3'35''). The main body of the finale is challengingly fast, at once lightweight and threatening; you don’t have to view this music as a self-conscious satire on enforced rejoicing to catch the real poignancy in its rare moments of (relative) repose.
Oddly, the suite from The Golden Age is not new to the Gramophone Database, having been previously coupled with the First Cello Concerto. It is well turned, its puckish humour characteristically unexaggerated. Or do I mean unnecessarily reined in? With Gergiev’s incendiary Barbican concert performance of the complete Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District still fresh in the ears, these orchestral interludes seem, no doubt unfairly, a little under-characterized. For most collectors, the symphony will be the main work and Maxim gives us the unvarnished truth as he sees it. With his quite different brand of music-making, Leopold Stokowski recorded a similar coupling for RCA in 1968; Khachaturian’s banal Third Symphony now substitutes for the Katerina Izmaylova entr’actes on offer here. 30 years on, the Supraphon recording team gets more coolly luminous results, and it helps that the Prague audiences are (improbably?) silent. Should the programme appeal, Neeme Jarvi’s entr’actes make a bold makeweight for his accomplished set of the relatively innocuous Ballet Suites.'