This disc presents a satisfying if somewhat quirkily planned programme. Near the opening of The Miraculous Mandarin ballet Salonen takes heed of Bartók’s poco allargando marking, a directive that in the wrong hands makes the orchestra sound as if it’s struggling. Not here though. Also, with Salonen the distinction between the pianissimo bass clarinet and the piano clarinet in A at the start of the first decoy game is very well judged, the girl – a beautiful young girl forced to lure men – seeming here tentative, even a little shy at first. That works too. Superb clarinet playing from the Philharmonia soloists, as in the two subsequent games, where the tension mounts (screaming woodwinds really tell) and Salonen marks the mandarin’s arrival with gutsy accents and powerful brass. Great syncopated trombones at the lead-in to the ‘chase’, taken at a frighteningly fast tempo (a little too fast to achieve a truly ruvido – rough – edge maybe), the climax slowing to marcatissimo, as prescribed.

But the real draw in this performance is the sequence beyond the ‘chase’ where the tramps leap out (tr 7), strip the mandarin of his valuables and attempt to suffocate him. Beyond that, and in spite of the tramps’ attempt at murder, the mandarin can only die when his longing for the girl is fulfilled. Salonen keeps this highly graphic and emotionally potent music on the move, so much so that you begin to wonder why anyone bothers with the suite: as with Ravel’s Mother Goose ballet, the whole work is so much more effective, and this performance is more compelling than most. It generates a genuine sense of theatre.

The Dance Suite is very good too, though I would have liked a more razor-sharp edge to the trombones in the second dance. Salonen sustains an especially beautiful performance of the tranquil fourth dance and delivers a firmly decisive finale. Interesting that, rather than offer us, say, the two Romanian Dances or the Hungarian Peasant Songs, Signum rounds things off with a sensitive, very well-played and pleasingly droll rendition of Contrasts with Yefim Bronfman underpinning violinist Zsolt-Tihamér Visontay and clarinettist Mark van de Wiel. The finale is especially effective.

As to a top choice for the complete Mandarin, Fischer is still pretty amazing and his recording has more clarity than this Signum production which, although not lacking in presence, does occasionally want for internal clarity. But it’s a great disc all the same.