Valery Gergiev’s live recording of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth with the Vienna Philharmonic made a great impact when it appeared in 1999. In this reissue the recording, by Austrian Radio, sounds even warmer, with the sound further opened out. It captures, as Jonathan Swain said in his original review, ‘an unpatched one-off performance bursting at the seams with passion, presence, theatre and vitality’. Gergiev’s Pathétique with the Kirov Orchestra followed soon after, even though it had been recorded earlier. It was not quite so rapturously received, partly, I suspect, because Gergiev’s flexible speeds sound more natural in performance than on disc.

Now come new versions of No 4 and the Pathétique with the Vienna Phil to cement Gergiev’s warm relationship with that great orchestra. In No 4, recorded live in the Musikverein, the performance again captures the qualities JS found so magnetic. The opening fanfare compels our attention, but the start of the main Moderato con anima with its lilting compound time is surprisingly relaxed – when set against the Jansons version – yet very convincing. Typically, Gergiev raises the tension when the balletic waltz-rhythms develop into the movement’s big climaxes.

Here, and throughout the performance, Gergiev’s subtle tempo changes sound totally idiomatic and spontaneous. The oboe theme at the start of the Andante slow movement is expressive rather than chilly, as Jansons makes it, and leads to a satisfying broadening at the fortissimo peak, before the main theme returns delicately decorated by the woodwind. The Vienna Philharmonic plainly love working with Gergiev, for the pizzicato playing is wonderfully taut in the Scherzo, with the ‘drunken peasant’ passage wittily pointed, while – like Jansons, with equally thrilling results – the finale culminates in a subtle accelerando in the closing bars of the coda. There is no applause, suggesting that a modest amount of patching was needed.

In the Pathétique the comparison with the Kirov version is most instructive. The timings of each movement are shorter now, markedly so in the first movement. Only the March has virtually the same timing and that is the most successful movement, with crisp rhythms and a more exciting build-up to the ebullient second half than the Kirov Orchestra.

Sadly, in the first and last movements, the tempo fluctuations so typical of Gergiev in Tchaikovsky too often sound forced: the climax of the development section, for example, and in the first statement of the noble second subject in the finale; the conductor seems to rush his fences. Yet, needless to say, the Vienna strings are superb throughout.

At almost every point Pletnev and Jansons sound more idiomatic and I am delighted that the Jansons/Oslo Phil performances, now 20 years old, remain so satisfying and compelling. The sound is generally more immediate than on the Philips discs, revealing more inner detail. Those who insist on SACD will be delighted with No 4 in the new issues, though if you want Gergiev in the Pathétique the Kirov performance is finer, and that disc offers the Romeo and Juliet Overture, too.