Things are finally looking up for Prokofiev the symphonist, with complete cycles in train from Andrew Litton and Marin Alsop. Better still, both look like having something original to say. Alsop’s approach is certainly very different from that of Theodore Kuchar, the forthright American in Kiev who previously recorded Prokofiev for Naxos. Aficionados of Valery Gergiev and the LSO may also have difficulties adjusting to Alsop’s relaxed view of the composer. Not since the far-off days of Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra have Prokofiev’s acerbic textures been given comparable space to glitter.

The present coupling is a notably intelligent one. The ballet The Prodigal Son came first in 1929, an early example of George Balanchine’s masterly choreography (not that the composer understood it). We now know from his diaries that Prokofiev saw symphonic potential in the material even before Serge Koussevitzky requested something new for the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s 50th anniversary. However, Prokofiev’s modest, four-movement Op 47 met with scant acclaim, its transitions abrupt, its terse developments exhibiting little of the transforming tension traditionally associated with the symphonic genre. What Prokofiev did in 1947 to create his Op 112 was to jump through a further series of conceptual hoops which transformed his neo-classical piece into a socialist realist epic. Commentators remain divided as to the merits of these scores, frequently letting political posturing cloud musical judgement.

Alsop’s carefully prepared, string-dominated textures may initially disappoint but she makes the revision sound subtler, less brash and disjointed than usual in this slow-burn interpretation. Remarkably, it is a score she conducted from memory in recent concert appearances with her other orchestra in Baltimore. I did wonder whether she meant some of the woodwind detail to be quite so reticent at the Sala São Paulo. The flute allocated the glorious lyrical theme of the slow movement, itself borrowed from the closing scene of the ballet, seems unnaturally recessed on its first appearance. Still, if you usually find the composer too raw, Alsop’s integrated, lyrical view of these works could be just the ticket. Only the booklet-notes are disappointingly basic, given the ampler information which accompanies the label’s Shostakovich series.