If you ever doubted that, beneath his steely gaze, Vladimir Jurowski has a keen sense of humour, skip immediately to ‘Puss-in-Boots and the White Cat’ on this new recording of The Sleeping Beauty. The descending oboe phrases bend nicely enough, but just wait until the cor anglais’s feline response, purring, miaowing and all but rubbing up against your legs. It’s a laugh-out-loud moment and confirmed – not that I’d really needed winning around – that this is a terrific recording.

Jurowski’s Tchaikovsky is familiar on disc, both with the London Philharmonic Orchestra (the symphonies) and the Russian National Orchestra (Suite No 3 and Hamlet incidental music) but here he conducts the State Academic Symphony Orchestra of Russia ‘Evgeny Svetlanov’ … which is quite a mouthful of a title! Essentially it is the orchestra founded in 1936 as the USSR State Symphony, the Svetlanov sobriquet added in 2005 to honour its former chief conductor who recorded so much with it on the state label, Melodiya.

It’s an excellent band, retaining some of the earthy, brazen quality from its Soviet days, especially when compared against Mikhail Pletnev’s ultra-refined RNO on their superb DG set. Where Pletnev revels in the filigree orchestral glitter and detail of the score, Jurowski prefers to emphasise the symphonic nature of Tchaikovsky’s ballet. The opening chords of the Prologue in this concert recording reach for the dramatic jugular. The playing is bold and red-blooded – not as quick as Neeme Järvi’s mad dash with the Bergen Philharmonic but often just as exciting.

The ‘Svetlanov’ band offer vivid characterisations: clarinets squeal and squirm as Carabosse gatecrashes Aurora’s christening; string pizzicatos are executed with pinpoint precision as the fairy scattering breadcrumbs; and Sergey Girshenko’s silky violin surges and swells in the Act 2 Vision scene. Husky double basses act as a sturdy foundation, throatily driving the action. Jurowski injects the ceremonial numbers with plenty of pomp and ensures an organic flow to the wonderful ‘Rose Adage’. This is livelier, grittier playing than Pletnev and the RNO and it’s very persuasive. Järvi whips his Bergen orchestra through the score a good five minutes faster, arguably too fast for some, but Jurowski can be just as exhilarating.

There is precision and brilliance in the Act 3 Wedding divertissement which, as Jurowski points out in a booklet interview, is different in character to the rest of the score, looking forwards, in many ways, to Stravinsky. The fairy-tale characters bristle with life, from Red Riding Hood and the Wolf to Tom Thumb to that pair of naughty pussy cats. Utterly delicious.