With the Sixth and Twelfth Symphonies, the RLPO harnesses one of the most profoundly thought-out of Shostakovich’s conceptions to one of the least. Petrenko seems determined to insist on that dichotomy. So the opening movement of No 6 comes in at an extremely distended 19'45" – those on my shelves range from 13'28" (Kondrashin) to 18'31" (Rostropovich, who could generally be relied on to stretch slow tempi to breaking point). So far as I’m concerned, almost any tempo in Shostakovich is OK in principle, so long as there is tension in the air. But here the opening section merely plods, and for all the orchestra’s efforts there is virtually no sense of phrasing, at least until the movement belatedly gets into its stride and the RLPO woodwind have a chance to shine. To be frank, I found it quite hard to get to the end; and I never thought I would say that of any Petrenko performance, least of all in his generally admirable Shostakovich cycle. The two fast movements go better, with some especially tasty portamentos in the finale. But even here the conception is flabby and marred by touches of uncertain pacing.

Curiously, the introduction to No 12 suffers from the same over-ponderous approach. And it’s such a shame, because the rest goes rather well, all the way from the coiled nerviness of ‘Revolutionary Petrograd’ to the radiant ‘Dawn of Humanity’.