Stanislav Kochanovsky is a seriously good conductor. Born in St Petersburg, he’s conducted opera regularly at the Mikhailovsky and Mariinsky Theatres and guest-conducts a fine roster of orchestras. I’ve seen him with the Philharmonia, Orchestre de Paris and the Rotterdam Philharmonic. He’s closely associated with Russian repertoire, although I recall a lockdown livestream of a touching Enigma Variations with the Moscow Philharmonic that has found its way on to some streaming platforms.

Taking up his post as Chief Conductor of the NDR Radiophilharmonie in Hanover at the start of the 2024 25 season, Kochanovsky succeeded Andrew Manze. This is his debut disc. Playing to his strengths, it’s all Russian repertoire but, apart from Rimsky-Korsakov’s Capriccio espagnol, ebulliently dispatched with flamboyant solos from leader Sarah Christian, the works are a little off the beaten track.

Tchaikovsky’s four orchestral suites are shamefully neglected on disc. The Third, the Suite in G, is the best, a four-movement work composed in 1884, Tchaikovsky having vacillated between symphonic and concerto form before settling on a suite. It’s given a beautifully crafted reading here. The NDR strings are tender, particularly in the opening Élégie, whose yearning melodic line seems to recall the early Op 6 romance ‘None but the lonely heart’.

The rippling Valse mélancolique briefly touches on anguish in its middle section, before chattering woodwinds pepper a Scherzo of Mendelssohnian lightness. The finale lasts nearly as long as the first three movements put together, a theme-and-variations structure where Kochanovsky contrasts and characterises each one deftly before the conclusion (13'23"), a strutting Polonaise in the manner of the Petersburg ball in Eugene Onegin.

Most of the competition goes back to the analogue era, but one of the finest of recent years comes from master Tchaikovskian Vladimir Jurowski, who impels a little more urgency from the Russian National Orchestra, but that’s not to detract from a most persuasive NDR reading.

The album’s curtain-raiser, Nikolay Tcherepnin’s La princesse lontaine, was written as a curtain-raiser itself, to Edmond Rostand’s 1895 play. A young troubadour sets out on an adventure to seek the princess Mélissinde (a role created in Paris by Sarah Bernhardt) and the prelude, a symphonic poem of sorts, is episodic. Kochanovsky draws refined playing from his orchestra in a charming account, splendidly recorded by the NDR engineers in Hanover’s Grosser Sendesaal.