If the booklet-notes are anything to go by, the conductor identifies this music with the hectic activity of war. So you can forget Sanderling, Rozhdestvensky, Haitink, Rostropovich or Wigglesworth. This is a quick-fire Eighth in the manner of Caetani’s sometime teacher, Kyrill Kondrashin. I can’t say I much warmed to it. At this speed the first movement loses much of its menacing impact despite the high energy of the results. The second Scherzo, all swagger and snap in the style of André Previn’s pioneering 1973 account (HMV Classics, 2/00R), isn’t balanced by a compensating chill elsewhere.

What gives this hybrid SACD – the sixth in Caetani’s symphonic cycle – its undoubted character is the super-vivid recording, in what sounds like an acoustically remarkable hall, and the raw, regionally accented edge to the playing. When the brass bray it’s a Fellini-esque effect, not a Soviet sound. While a certain authenticity of experience is conveyed, it would be unwise to make this committed yet almost exclusively extrovert rendition the only version of the piece in your collection. Post-concert applause remains.