For the LPO to give us yet more Sibelius from Paavo Berglund is not as daft as it might seem. His EMI recordings from the mid-1980s announced a Sibelian of fine instinct and intellect but the Helsinki orchestral playing at that time was quite ragged in places (notably in the Scherzo of the Second Symphony). A decade later his high-voltage, streamlined accounts with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe were superbly played but suffered from extensive self-conscious point-making. Another 10 years on and the interpretations have matured and settled – though maybe that is a factor of simply not having enough rehearsal time to deconstruct the LPO’s default approach to Sibelius – and the playing is top-notch. The recording is fine, though the balance (most likely Berglund’s preference) strongly favours the violins. Strangely, in the Seventh Symphony at track 7, 5’20”, there are three indistinct shouts that sound like heckling from the back of the audience. Surely these cannot be muffled expostulations from the podium? Very distracting in any case.

Curiously, though, the thrill of live music-making is not as conspicuous as it is with the COE studio versions or, still more, with those of Lahti/Vänskä or the reissued Hallé/Barbirolli, where the conducting itself is both more fervent and more visionary. With the LPO and Berglund there are passages in both symphonies – not many, admittedly, but still enough to preclude a strong recommendation – that have a slight feel of routine.

And if this is the case with Berglund, it is all the more so with Mackerras and the LSO. Robert Layton justly assessed the original 1989 release of the Second Symphony and The Swan of Tuonela as ‘thoroughly straightforward without ever being matter of fact’, and he clearly found the lack of ‘expressive idiosyncrasy’ refreshing after his recent encounter with the Vienna Philharmonic under Bernstein. The same may be said of the RPO in the Karelia Suite. But it is hard to point to positive virtues in Mackerras’s accounts beyond his justly famed common sense, and the recordings haven’t come up all that sparkling either. Regis has produced some delectable bargain reissues lately but this is not one of them.