I was at The Bridgewater Hall last October for the performance captured here on disc (the recording makes use of rehearsals, too, but the feel of the live event is by no means lost and the outburst of raucous applause at the end is left in). I had also been at Liverpool’s Philharmonic Hall in January 2012 to hear Petrenko and the RLPO in the same symphony, which they recorded six months afterwards.

The contrast was remarkable. Petrenko embarked on the first movement with a curious slackness and an absence of forward impetus that could have been his way of saying ‘don’t forget the marking is Allegretto, not Allegro’ (it’s worth noting that Mravinsky, conductor of the first performance, had no such qualms). Elder, on the other hand, launched into that opening with momentum, power and definition in equal measure. And that set him on course for a performance that was a real experience, as opposed to Petrenko’s more detached reading.

This may not be as surprising as it sounds. Anyone who caught The Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District at English National Opera in the late 1980s will know how deep Elder’s affinity with Shostakovich runs; and he conducts the Leningrad with an equally sure instinct for large-scale drama. Detail is there aplenty (the articulation of that first-movement opening, for instance, is both imaginative and perfectly idiomatic), but the over-riding impression is of unfailing dramatic tension over the entire 76-minute span. Petrenko’s Shostakovich, on the other hand, has had its hits and misses, the latter usually because of self-consciously spaced-out tempi, insufficiently supported by intensity or eloquence in the phrasing. He takes only three minutes longer overall but the impression sometimes borders on the lethargic.

Both accounts are superb in the long accumulation of the finale (at the beginning of which it is Petrenko who for once sounds the more involved). But the inner movements, almost wherever you sample them, show Elder with his finger more surely on the pulse and his orchestra more resourceful in its colours and sheer heft.

The Naxos recording admittedly gives the RLPO more of a boost. But with the right adjustment the Hallé’s finds more natural perspectives and accommodates the climaxes with more shattering impact. That impact, however, boils down to the conducting more than anything else.