Back in September 1971 I attended a concert at London’s Royal Festival Hall by what was then the Leningrad Philharmonic under Arvīds Jansons (Mariss’s father). On the programme was an account of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony that thrilled me to the core, what with its sleek lines and dynamic attack, qualities that seemed to mirror the various Fifths that the orchestra’s principal conductor for near-on 50 years, Yevgeny Mravinsky, habitually brought to the score.

For this admirably transferred release (Paul Baily’s excellent work) the performance was much as I remembered it, which is why an interesting comment in Jean-Charles Hoffelé’s excellent note rather took me aback. ‘It could be said that it sounds like the polar opposite to the imperious style that … Mravinsky habitually deployed in this work’, he writes. Granted that he acknowledges the finale’s ‘blazing presto’ … but ‘especially coming after the expansiveness and profundity of the three preceding movements’? That’s certainly not how I heard things in 1971, so out of interest I checked Jansons against Mravinsky/Leningrad PO recordings of the Fifth from 1948, 1960 and 1983. The 1960 (DG) version – the one I was familiar with at the time – provides the best point of comparison. Granted Mravinsky’s account of the second movement clocks up 11'53" as compared with Jansons’s marginally broader 12'38", but as for the first, third and fourth movements we have Mravinsky’s arrival times of 14'33", 5'31" and 11'03" to compare with Jansons at 14'32", 5'36" and 11'18". To these ears, then as now, Jansons was in essence a loyal ambassador for Mravinsky’s interpretation and the Leningraders followed him every step of the way.

Francesca da Rimini again recalls Mravinsky, details such as the whispering strings at full pelt and drawing back ever so slightly for the p marcato bassoon at 3'42". Here we’re transported to the Royal Albert Hall in the same month for another remarkably gripping performance.

Mravinsky also recorded selections from the Sleeping Beauty ballet in the late 1940s/early 1950s (11 numbers in all – now on Profil, 11/17) and here I would say that although there are similarities between the two, Jansons has the more refined ensemble at his disposal. Mravinsky had yet to achieve the levels of polish and finesse that would distinguish his Leningrad PO productions from around 10 years later. This most recommendable set is rounded off with a mostly genial 1983 Ulster Hall performance of Prokofiev’s Classical Symphony with the USSR Symphony Orchestra (the finale is terrific), recorded almost exactly a year before Jansons’s death from heart failure.