A decent account of Tchaikovsky’s so-called Little Russian Symphony – though not so little in this expansive and beefy Cologne production. But Dmitri Kitaenko and the cultured Gürzenich Orchestra are nothing if not mindful of that delicate balance between the classical and emotive aspects of Tchaikovsky’s nature and to that end the wistful horn-led folk theme of the first movement is set up in leisurely contrast to the driving Allegro. I’ve heard ‘dirtier’, more trenchant accounts of that; and the finale, too, is a little too grandly imperialistic, where the recent Pletnev recording with the splendid Russian National Orchestra found ways of maintaining its formality while making it racier and splashier. Those of us brought up on the likes of Svetlanov and Markevitch will know that that innate Russianism – as in rangier and brassier – is pretty much a thing of the past. Kitaenko’s middle movements are in the best taste, with the second movement’s jaunty ‘patrol’ nicely bled into the contrasting Trio.

With this kind of reading of the symphony, Tchaikovsky’s Rococo Variations makes an especially elegant coupling, the Gürzenich Orchestra’s classical heritage feeding into the Russian master’s wonderfully intuitive way with variation form. The soloist, Leonard Elschenbroich, seems to ‘belong’ among their number, offering the kind of honest, generous and yet self-effacing playing that seems to emanate from the first desk of the cellos. It’s a rich and mellifluous sound but one that can be scaled back to the finest nuancing. The Andante sostenuto variation, one of those great examples of Tchaikovsky elevating the commonplace to the sublime, is the more beautiful in his hands for being modest and unaffected. The Andante cantabile filler (from the First String Quartet) is soulful in the best sense.

If the coupling suits then I doubt you’ll be disappointed if your taste is inclined towards Tchaikovsky’s classicism over his Russianism. Even so, I do think Pletnev is by quite a wide margin the more exciting performance of the symphony and his disc offers the radically different first version of the first movement as a fascinating comparison – a comparison that leaves one in no doubt that the discipline of form was always Tchaikovsky’s priority.