Given the way Daniele Gatti romanticises Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring (Sony, A/13; RCO Live, 4/18), you wouldn’t peg him as a reliable guide to Oedipus Rex. And he isn’t. The melodrama that boils over in Massimo Popolizio’s opening narration (miles from Jean Cocteau’s cool irony on Stravinsky’s initial account – 6/55) heralds an unidiomatic performance, with rich string sound, thick textures, histrionic gestures, slowish tempos and little sympathy for Stravinsky’s stony surfaces.

If, however, you can accept the questionable premise – and the fits of shaky ensemble, awkward balance and approximate rhythm that mar this presumably unedited live performance – you may find something to enjoy here. Gatti shapes the drama intelligently, carefully moulding his dynamics and assuring that the music’s moments of arrival are well marked. And other than Adolfo Corrado as Tiresias (he’s too heroically assertive and struggles to reach his low notes), the singers are up to the task. AJ Glueckert has the vocal agility and the temperamental arrogance Oedipus requires; Alex Esposito is a strong, self-assured Creon; and, despite her vibrato and tendency to blur words, Ekaterina Semenchuk thrillingly conveys Jocasta’s increasing panic.

Still, to experience the true power of the work, you’d do better with something more stylistically aware, like the early Colin Davis (Warner, 3/63) or, better yet, that first Stravinsky recording. Stravinsky was an uneven conductor but Oedipus catches him at his peak, with total control and an all-star cast.

Ildebrando Pizzetti’s Three Orchestral Preludes for Oedipus takes a radically different route in its attempt to evoke a mythic past. Dark and restrained in colour where the Stravinsky is shot through with flashes of scorching light, it is – especially in its outer movements – rounded rather than jagged in outline, atmospheric rather than narrative in function and heart-on-its-sleeve rather than ritualistic in temper. It gets a more apposite reading than the Stravinsky does; but compared to Osmo Vänskä’s penetrating interpretation (Hyperion, 12/99), Gatti’s sounds diffuse.