From Cologne to Munich, Berlin and now Stuttgart, the Shostakovich centenary bug really seemed to bite last year. The results have been mixed, the very qualities we prize in German orchestras sometimes tending to work against the brutalist requirements of the music. The Stuttgart band may lack the tonal specificity of the Moscow Philharmonic but, with Sir Roger Norrington as their chief, the players are used to making stylistic adaptations and, together with Andrey Boreyko, their principal guest, they conjure up plenty of colour and weight. Bychkov’s recent alternative is fresher-textured yet ultimately less idiomatic. Leningrad-born Boreyko, an infrequent UK visitor about to hit the big time with a string of major US dates, has a darker, more immediate kind of flair. The interpretation is a mainstream one so there’s little to cavil at. Boreyko makes more of the second movement than his peers, imparting an air of menace which some will find merely heavy-footed. By contrast the finale’s titanic final climax feels rather brisk, its full nightmare ferocity, and perhaps its place in the structure, being more successfully captured by Gergiev.

The live recording is vivid if a little close, with enthusiastic applause retained only after the coupling, a brilliant, rip-roaring account of the rather pointless mini-suite Shostakovich drew from The Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. Hänssler’s claim that this constitutes some kind of world premiere cannot be sustained. These three interludes would give newcomers a very one-dimensional idea of what the opera is all about!