The Fifth Symphony, opening the disc, benefits greatly from the superb playing of the Russian National Orchestra. Spiky, arrogant woodwind and rich, firmly bowed strings characterise a performance of great orchestral colour. The percussion are never overdone, yet their presence is momentous and powerful; the brass excel. The recording quality here is flawless: clean, spacious and vibrant, capturing the score's violent outbursts (the Moderato's march or the memorably crashing final crescendo) in heady, swirling grotesqueness.

Cleanliness is also a key feature of the musical performance, under the baton of Yakov Kreizberg. The opening antiphonal strings are clearly divided and firmly conversational, while both first and second themes are easily, individually characterised. There is also great appreciation of the dramatic function of silence here, or at least the function of textural sparsity, the woodwind lines haunting and empty in the development section, highlighting the brash bitterness of the percussion march that follows. The Allegretto, similarly, is presented clearly, the textures thick yet firmly and almost elegantly balanced. The Largo's surging seas of strings are overwhelmingly moving, breaking with Tchaikovskian anguish from the tapestry of mesmeric high violin drones and dully plodding orchestral rhythms; the rich cello sound is especially notable. Indeed, what is startling in the first three movements is how Kreizberg manages to provide such a lucid, clear and easily paced reading without monotony peering into the performance: the harsh harmonies, angular melodies and overwhelmingly distorted developments are, indeed, shocking, carefully presented yet seemingly spontaneous and brutal.

Yet in the final Allegro non troppo, something doesn't add up for me. The extraordinary lugubrious struggle to the end is arresting, the slow tempo especially convincing one of Shostakovich's climactic insincerity. But the entire movement, though played with great virtuosity, seems more an exploration of technique than anything more deeply felt. The music never seems to be balanced on a knife edge and feels not dangerous enough: it seems miserly to ask for a greater grittiness of sound, but I sense that the orchestra's supreme playing removes some argumentative glory from this most ambiguous of symphonic conclusions. But then this is a highly subjective point. I saw King Lear in London last week, and while my knowledgeable companion thought Ian McKellen's performance to be the finest of his career so far, I found it false of sentiment, the character's actions breathtakingly realised theatrically but rarely tied to a convincing human emotion. So here, others may find the raw passion beneath the brilliant surface where I have not. But while I have reservations about the final movement, I have none about recommending this interpretation as a whole. It's exciting stuff.

And the Ninth Symphony is given no less involving a reading, the dark, tragic irony of its CD companion swapped for a gleeful giddiness and cheeky warmth of expression. The outer movements are played with such snap and ingenuity that I laughed out loud on more than one occasion, yet the work's darker centre, found in the mysterious, deathly Moderato and the terrifying Largo, is equally strongly conveyed. This is, all in all, a very fine disc.

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