With the personable Vasily Petrenko having committed himself to Merseyside music-making until 2015, this latest instalment of Liverpudlian Shostakovich will be scrutinised with more than usual interest. Both symphonies need careful handling in order to balance their dichotomous aspects. Personal survival may have been the priority in the worst days of Stalin’s Terror but the conductor himself makes the point that the Fifth is not just about politics “because his symphonies are as much a history of his personal life as of his country”. Might the wide-ranging first movement second subject allude to Bizet’s Carmen because it recalls a Spanish-domiciled lady friend? Should we see its companion here as an anti-Ninth, put together against the background of daunting musical expectations, or admit the likely presence of a political subtext? Working in Washington DC, Mstislav Rostropovich makes both pieces sound as “oppositional” as possible, at times anticipating speed changes and/or inventing a few of his own. Petrenko doesn’t go that far but nor is he content with innocent nose-thumbing.

His Fifth is remarkable for the tight discipline and detailed characterisation of musicians plainly on the up. At full cry, the strings seek to emulate the weighty tone of the old Soviet ensembles without quite getting there; the hushed intensity of their pianissimo is already quite something. Tempi are broad while eschewing too much point-scoring. The great Largo has Leonard Bernstein’s breadth without his sometimes intrusive breast-beating. The finale sounds more “negative” than it did in the 1960s, in part because the sort of fiery, finally hell-for-leather interpretation with which Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic impressed the composer on their groundbreaking Soviet tour took its cue from a misprinted metronome mark. Petrenko drags himself towards the final climax with weary deliberation, transforming what might be construed as an active Soviet archetype into a heavier-footed dirge of dissent. The anti-cathartic treatment, quite orthodox nowadays, will disappoint some listeners. I don’t quite buy it.

The five-movement Ninth has sufficient energy and muscle to make it more than a mere divertissement. As seems to be his wont Petrenko takes his time with the second movement, imparting almost too much aching reflectiveness, notwithstanding the loveliness of the playing. This Moderato, so-called, is succeeded by a whizzing Presto, demonstrating just how far the RLPO’s corporate virtuosity has developed in a relatively short time. The finale puts on a cartoonish burst of speed at its pompous apex. Though you may not like this or that effect, the performance as a whole is deft and undeniably persuasive.

What of the competition? Difficult not to hear echoes of the tyranny from which Kyrill Kondrashin ultimately defected but never lived to see collapse, in his heavy-duty 1965 Moscow recording of the Ninth, now part of a consistently inspired Shostakovich series on 11 CDs. However, the separate coupling of Nos 5 and 9 remains popular. If price is no object Yakov Kreizberg arguably retains pride of place among more modern pairings. Petrenko’s recording team does not obtain the state-of-the-art transparency of Pentatone’s SACD production although the beefier sound of today’s RLPO is projected with fidelity. The Naxos booklet-notes are better, even if Serge Koussevitzky’s role in propagating the Ninth in the West has been overlooked. We know from that maestro’s experience that the composer himself would probably have rejected Petrenko’s slow tempo in the second movement of the Ninth. No matter. If things continue like this Petrenko may well prove himself an orchestra builder of distinction in the Koussevitzky mould. Recommended.