With so many Shostakovich symphonies already in contention, someone at Pentatone had the bright idea of capturing a sonically superior cycle from their star orchestra. Each featured maestro has been drawn from the impressive “collegium” which shares the podium of the Russian National Orchestra with founding avatar Mikhail Pletnev. We’ve had a lean and brilliant First and Sixth from Vladimir Jurowski and, from Pletnev himself, a determinedly objective Eleventh, compromised by cramped live recording. With the Eighth, we are back in a more resonant Moscow studio and the results are outstandingly faithful.

Playing and interpretation I found marginally less convincing. While this may not be one of the Shostakovich works previously recorded by Paavo Berglund, he has directed performances all over the world and is certainly right inside the piece. The problem, which you may think no problem at all, is that this is yet another sober, funereal view of a score which could do with a rethink. Like many Western performances, it seems to take its cue from Bernard Haitink’s pioneering Concertgebouw LP version rather than the more active Soviet-Russian tradition exemplified by Mravinsky or Kondrashin and to which Vassily Sinaisky recently returned during this year’s BBC Proms.

All of which means that Berglund’s first movement is wearyingly slow, lacking the rhythmic definition that the music ideally requires. A few imperfectly co-ordinated moments may perhaps relate to the conductor’s physical frailty – his intellectual command is not in doubt – but you get nary a hint that the argument is the product of a young man’s imagination.

If you’re happy with this, all well and good, though a more convincing sonic mausoleum was erected by Kurt Sanderling in East Berlin some 30 years ago (Berlin Classics, 7/94 – and sporadically available since). If you must have SACD, the bleak sobriety of Mark Wigglesworth (BIS, 1/06) is mightily impressive, too, and the sound engineering is as good as any.