Spliced together from a couple of critically acclaimed concerts towards the end of September 2013, this latest helping of Tchaikovsky from Andris Nelsons and the CBSO certainly packs a punch. Indeed, it’s some measure of the stellar results that Nelsons has been achieving in Birmingham over the past few years that I approached this new Manfred with the keenest anticipation. Like Mikhail Pletnev on his illuminating Pentatone remake, he takes a imposingly spacious view of Tchaikovsky’s tempestuous symphonic portrait, but such is his no-holds-barred conviction, sparky temperament and exhilarating mastery of line and texture that the 58 minutes fairly fly by. For evidence of a classy orchestral alliance operating at maximum throttle witness the molten string tone and snapping intensity of the brass in the glowering first-movement coda beginning at 14'45"; and in the riotous revelry that launches the finale, what a high-kicking cossack dance these players serve up from fig F or 2'10" (a pity, though, about those dodgy additional trumpets a little later on at 2'36"). No quibbles, either, with the satisfying heft of the organ in the work’s apotheosis; the closing measures, too, convey a gentle pathos that is very moving.

Ultimately, I still think Pletnev and his astonishing Russian National Orchestra just have the edge in terms of home-grown empathy, unswerving concentration and (in the Scherzo especially) miraculous composure; their two fascinatingly different interpretations on DG and Pentatone really do complement each other beautifully. Nonetheless, Nelsons’s broodingly passionate and imaginatively conceived reading remains a must-hear by any standards. Give or take the odd (very isolated) bump and page-turn, not to mention the conductor’s sometimes audible intakes of breath, producer Tim Oldham has preserved the combustible charge of what was clearly quite an event. March slave comprises a giddily rousing curtain-raiser – and fingers crossed for the first three Tchaikovsky symphonies from these same artists!