Mikhail Pletnev’s multifarious career has not included a post as a theatre conductor but his devotion to Tchaikovsky is manifest in this performance. He knows the orchestra he created well, and how much he can ask of it; it is the orchestra as virtuoso that dominates. There is some beautiful individual playing, from the all-important oboe (with a broad but expressive tone), from a plangent harp, from an eloquent solo violin in the Andante of the Act 1 pas de deux and Act 2 pas d’action, from a brass section that includes a witty show-off cornet player for the Act 3 Neapolitan dance.

Pletnev does not spare them. Tchaikovsky did not give metronome markings in this ballet, as he did in The Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker, and some of the tempi which Pletnev feels free to take have more to do with orchestral virtuosity than dance rhythms. The Act 1 and Act 3 waltzes are both rather hard-driven, and the codas to the Act 1 pas de deux and at the end of Act 2, respectively Allegro molto vivace and Allegro vivo, are the cue for speeds that are a tour de force from the orchestra but not much else.

Yet there is also some delightful playing. The Introduction is beautifully atmospheric with an eerie sense of impending tragedy, Odette’s Act 2 solo is gracefully phrased, the little swans hop and bob captivatingly, the mazurka for soloists and corps de ballet goes with a good Polish swing.

In the other national dances, the Spaniards fare better than the Hungarians, who have a proud strut in the slow section of their csardas but in the fast music are rushed off their feet. The recording is rather mixed. The woodwind solos are sympathetically treated, as is the solo violin, but the bass tends to be heavy, with powerful bass drum thumps dominating and with the brass section overwhelming the detail when given its head in the Act 1 Goblet Dance and with the theme in the triumphant closing pages. It is a dramatic performance but the drama is with the orchestra rather than with the ballet.