Something of a Tchaikovsky hit-parade here (hence the title and Classic FM connection) but nothing run-of-the-mill about the performers. The strident trumpet fanfares announcing Capriccio italien are an auspicious start and Petrenko’s darkly saturated Royal Liverpool Philharmonic strings pull us in, the final bars of the soulful first theme driven home with real trenchancy. You can hear straight away what fine sound the engineers have achieved in Liverpool’s Philharmonic Hall. For the rest of this opening showpiece, Petrenko – the tourist from St Petersburg – clearly knows a good Italian street party when he comes across one. Bags of colour, sparkling work from the RLPO trumpets and a heady sprint through the final pages, which certainly does the business.

Romeo and Juliet is more subdued, very much in the ‘classical’ vein, with subtle instrumental blends and wonderful attention to dynamics. Petrenko achieves a truly breathtaking hush of disquiet at the lead in to the first agitated allegro and the love theme arrives on gossamer strings swelling to its final blossoming without overworking the rubato. I’ve heard more exciting accounts but few as sensitive.

Much the same might be said of Francesca da Rimini where the winds of Dante’s inferno hardly blast as intensely as they do in the famous Stokowski recording – or indeed the highly emotive account (still my favourite) from Bernstein and the Israel Philharmonic. Tchaikovsky’s innate classicism again takes precedence over a more explicit ‘pictorial’ romanticism, with the balletic allusions beautifully pointed in the central love scene with its delectable woodwind colorations. The climax wrought from that limpid clarinet theme is a splendid thing.

And so to the year 1812, which delivers the martial goods with vigour. Urgency is the key here, with Petrenko adopting a super-propulsive tempo for the main allegro section – very exciting – and no sense of lost momentum in the lyric interludes. The final assault brings a telling assortment of bells and a suitably ground-shaking cannonade. Definitely an IMAX experience.