There are plenty of selections from Rimsky-Korsakov’s more popular operas to be heard on record but the only music here familiar to many collectors will be the four pieces from The Snow Maiden. Pletnev and his virtuoso orchestra make a charming sound picture of the Dance of the Birds, woodwind all a twitter, and leap with plenty of vigour into the single most popular item, the Dance of the Clowns, or Skomorokhi.

But there is really more interest in the other suites. The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh seems never to have been staged in Britain, though it contains some fine and original music narrating its strange story. The music is actually continuous but the composer soon extracted a suite that includes the beautiful opening Prelude which, for all the Wagnerian influences, contains his nature mysticism at its most individual and alluring, as well as the Tartar Invasion and Battle of Kershenets, and finally the death and transfiguration of the Princess Fevroniya. This is evocatively played and given a suitably spacious recording.

Mlada began life as a peculiar co operative venture with Borodin, Cui and Mussorgsky; what eventually emerged out of a complicated history was an opera-ballet, also containing some remarkable music, especially in the suite derived from Act 3 as “Night on Mount Triglav”. If there are again suggestions of Wagner (the rustle of Siegfried’s Forest Murmurs is faintly heard), Rimsky’s own spell is woven with the ghostly apparitions and in the clear morning as dawn breaks. The old orchestral magician was always most himself when nature and the supernatural intertwined.