It seems like – indeed it is – an eternity ago that Mariss Jansons first made such an impression with his Oslo recordings of the Tchaikovsky symphonies. I always felt that they lacked the essential temperament for this music, that time would free up Jansons’s talent and make him more of a force to be reckoned with. It has. Granted, this live performance of the Fourth still has instances of expressive nuance that are lacking in spontaneity – that sound “applied” as opposed to “organic” – but there is undeniably a very real sense of in-the-moment excitement and imperative about it. Jansons gets increasing urgency into the fatalistic fanfares each time they are sent to try us. Their final appearance in the finale – a moment of truth if ever there was one – brings two of the most decisive knock-out punches you’ll hear in any performance of the piece. Lyrically, too, everything is shaped and nurtured to entrancing effect. The second movement really sings – and I love the little woodwind asides (especially the “knowing” solo bassoon) in the return of the principal melody towards the close.

My problem is with the recording. The effect of it is dry and enclosed, without much presence or atmosphere – certainly no sense of a “live” ambience. The very opening of the Piano Concerto does not augur well with Jansons’s Bavarian strings submerged under the pummelling of Yefim Bronfman’s accompanying chords. Amazing how a sound balance can turn the music around to suggest Bronfman in a fit of pique for not having the tune. Elsewhere he is accomplished without being in any way inspirational. For sure, the playing is often bullishly exciting (not least in the pneumatic double-octave passages) but there is nothing here that sounds remotely personal, nothing which truly taps into the introvert as well as the extrovert aspects of the piece. And even then you ask yourself if the finale’s fiery Cossack dance could have been a whisker more impulsive.