The obvious question is why it has taken more than 17 years for Haitink’s second recording of Shostakovich’s wartime colossus to be released. But my perplexity, having heard the disc, rather concerns why anyone should have thought it worth putting out at all. Nothing about it is superior to Haitink’s benchmark 1982 Decca account. Not much is even equal to it, and plenty falls conspicuously short. There is no premium to this being a live performance. Indeed, minor problems of ensemble are periodically distracting. Nor is the recording quality as fine, tending as it does to boxiness. Even the booklet note is off-target in several respects.

As for the interpretation, the long first movement – so magnificent in the earlier recording – sags seriously in the middle, and I certainly would not have listened past the first 10 minutes had I not been duty-bound. The second and third movements make far less impact than they should; the passacaglia is beautifully played but misses its post-traumatic bleached compassion; and frankly I had lost interest by the time the finale was under way.

The 1982 Decca original has certainly stood the test of time, although the second and fifth movements hang fire by comparison with Kondrashin in 1961. The Concertgebouw’s woodwind intonation is superior to that of its Moscow counterparts; but Kondrashin and his orchestra are more tautly paced, more trenchant in their articulation and even weightier of tone. They convey the full measure of the music’s overwhelming drama with an immediacy that is still unmatched.