Like Rattle in his recent Berlin Philharmonic account (EMI, 7/08), Paavo Järvi looks to Ravel’s refinement for his picture gallery. Mussorgsky’s brushstrokes were broader – oils as opposed to watercolours – and extraordinary though the Frenchman’s aural imagination was, one must beware preciousness in performance; the Russianism of the piece should still prevail. Järvi’s Cincinnati Symphony are certainly distinguished (if not quite capable of the BPO’s jaw-dropping distinction) and there are lovely details to behold here: the exquisite colour-matching of bassoons and saxophone in “The Old Castle”, the very “proper” nannies of well heeled juveniles in the trio of “Tuileries”, the corpulent Goldenberg drawn in really oily legato (minimum accenting like Rattle) making for optimum contrast with the jibbering Schmuyle. But the refinements sometimes override the characterisation and in “Bydlo”, for instance, the crudeness of the imagery (definitely a woodcut, this one) is undermined by a tuba too well groomed and a climax insufficiently crushing. Impressive gradations of brass in “Catacombs” bring real trumpet-topped “height” to the sound and incisively caught timpani and bass drum propel “Baba-Yaga” at a pace suggesting she means business. Still, though, I want more forceful sonorities: “The Great Gate of Kiev” doesn’t really invoke awe until the mighty bell tolls of the last bars. The percussion department appear to have found the bell from the original tower and Telarc’s engineers really make the pay-off ear-popping.

The fillers are predictable but played with style. Rimsky-Korsakov’s taming of Mussorgsky’s starkly original Night on the Bare Mountain is for me one of Russian music’s great travesties. Järvi goes for sharp tempo fluctuations and precipitous quickenings of pace in his attempt to put some of the night terrors back into the piece. But Rimsky’s black Sabbath was always too orderly; the original, and only the original, delivers satanic anarchy. Had the night been hairier we would have appreciated those consoling clarinet and flute solos of the postlude all the more.