Santtu-Matias Rouvali proves himself a persuasive Shostakovich conductor on this live recording, his first release of the composer’s music. His interpretations are not the most searingly intense, mind you, yet both symphonies here are thoughtfully and often imaginatively realised. Take one of my favourite moments in the Sixth, for instance, near the end of the first movement where icy trills in the celesta and high up in the violins are met by a warmer E major chord led by a solo horn (at 14'22"). In Rouvali’s hands, it comes across as a bleak ray of sunshine, offering only the faintest and most fleeting glimmer of consolation. In Klaus Mäkelä’s recent account (Decca, A/24), by comparison, it’s more like a warm embrace – effective, sure, but far less poetic. Similarly, while Mäkelä bolts through the scherzo-like second movement as if on a scorched-earth campaign, Rouvali finds more emotional and textural variety. Both are appropriately nightmarish but Rouvali’s has a kind of ‘dream logic’ whose unpredictability is in many ways more unsettling.

Rouvali takes similar care with the Ninth. I like the contrast he sets up between the playfully spiky start of the opening Allegro and the smoother but more ominous textures about half a minute in, and how this pays off in the central development section (at 3'22") where he employs a thick, quicksand-like legato that threatens to swallow us. There’s plenty of humour and rhythmic point, but I appreciate the sense in the course of the movement’s five and a half minutes that we’ve journeyed into a darker realm. I do wish the trombone was more raucous in its fortissimo announcements of the marchlike fanfare (first heard at 0'42"), but perhaps microphone placement is at fault.

There’s some gorgeously sensitive woodwind-playing in the second movement and Robin O’Neill’s bassoon solos in the fourth movement are movingly expressive yet noble. Various other conductors are more wildly daring in the finale – Rudolf Barshai (Brilliant Classics), say, or Yakov Kreizberg (Pentatone, 8/07) – but Rouvali’s relatively relaxed approach fits with his overall conception. And, again, his feeling for texture and sonic weight pays off in spades. Listen to how fiercely the strings dig in at 2'35", for example; it’s a perfect foil for the light-footed drollery that preceded it. I’m now especially keen to hear what he might do with the First and Fifteenth symphonies.