Tchaikovsky’s fatalistic fanfares reveal the high quality of this Super Audio BIS production – open but forthright with a satisfying edge to the brass – and the arrival of the first subject is sufficiently urgent to catch one a little off-guard. I wish more of Neeme Järvi’s performance delivered that kind of frisson. The haunting second subject group drifts into hazy reverie with velvety ostinato timps and beautifully nuanced dynamics. Järvi’s ear for colour in the reprise, when horn takes over from cellos, really points up the imagination of Tchaikovsky’s scoring. Likewise in the sweetly melancholic second movement Andantino.

But well heard though everything is, and satisfying though the tempi and their relationships to each other always are, I miss an element of volatility here, a romantic temperament wrestling with forces beyond his control. That touch of impetuosity in the first appearance of the first subject is not really carried through to the fiery development where defiant trombones rise up to meet it. Järvi doesn’t exactly take off the gloves here, so its final tremolando appearance is not quite the triumph of will it needs to be. Everything is sound and secure but would that it threatened otherwise. The explosive arrival of the finale needs to suck the breath from you with its pace – Järvi opts for steady, splashy, and resounding.

His unforced way with the Serenade for Strings never overstates what is after all, well, a serenade – an informal, personalised entertainment. One might imagine his delightfully relaxed, unassuming way with the waltz accompanying a private dinner. Only in the Elegy does the music and performance aspire to a more public display of feelings too intense to be contained. It’s like something from between the acts of Onegin.

And there’s another Elegy – a rarity in G major initially written as a keepsake for the actor Ivan K Samarin to celebrate his 50th anniversary as a stage performer. The man clearly played Hamlet with finesse.