Neeme Järvi’s understated cycle of the Tchaikovsky symphonies has certainly accentuated the innate classicism of this music and, within that, its need to dance. What really excites this performance of the so-called Polish is not just that which gave it its name in the first place – the polacca finale is by no means its only allusion to the grand and rarefied world of Tchaikovsky’s great ballets – but an approach to rhythm and articulation which keeps the textures open (the BIS sound engineers of course play their part in this) and the phrasing fluid.

Järvi’s reading of the symphony may sometimes lack temperament and that last degree of swagger but at tempi that would indeed keep those imaginary dancers on their toes it exhibits great vitality and, more importantly, an abiding warmth and affection for what one can safely say is – along with the still underrated Orchestral Suite No 3 – Tchaikovsky’s most lyric symphonic creation. The middle movements especially repay Järvi’s lightness of touch, spontaneous and luminous.

We remain “on stage” for the rest of the disc – a selection of sweetmeats from Tchaikovsky’s theatre music, familiar or not, incidental or otherwise. The most interesting morsels come from the “dramatic chronicle” Dmitri the Pretender and Vassily Shuisky: a darkly contemplative and fleetingly tormented Introduction and a rather graceful Mazurka. But the most touching item has to be the tiny Serenade that Tchaikovsky wrote for the Name Day of his friend and champion Nikolai Rubinstein, the man who first conducted the Third Symphony. It’s amazing what can be revealed in three minutes and in this very personal charmer we graduate from wistful introspection to hymnic admiration in less time than it takes to realise that Tchaikovsky has fleetingly and so very discreetly opened his heart to his friend.