If this fascinating coupling has ever been done before, I confess it has escaped me. As with the Fourth Symphony, Prokofiev conceived a major work under one set of cultural assumptions and revised it under another. In the early 1930s his patent brand of Parisian neoclassical urbanity was already rubbing up against an urge to get back to melodiousness and expressive weight, producing one kind of uneasy friction. Twenty years on, chastened after most of his attempts to aim those instincts at the moving target of Socialist Realism had met with rejection, he tried to smooth the edges and disguise the joins. Far more radical than any routine revision, the result was a tamer, bulkier and distinctly more approachable beast, whose cello-writing comes more readily off the page, thanks in large part to the advice of the young Rostropovich. But the impression remains of music that is uncomfortable in its own skin, and the newly adopted double-barrelled title merely seeks to put a positive spin on that.

Hearing either work in isolation is unsettling, therefore, compared to the wholeness of the finest of Prokofiev’s concertos and symphonies. Yet experiencing both versions side by side is a revelation – even more disturbing, in many ways, yet also endlessly thought-provoking – as it shows one of the most brilliantly gifted composers in history beset by irreconcilable conflicts between instinct and culture. The music squirms but is determined not to give up the fight, and at a deeper level than direct musical expression this is profoundly moving.

With the best will in the world, neither the orchestral playing here nor the recording are of the richest. But Alban Gerhardt’s playing, appropriately spotlit, is top-drawer stuff. This important, if troubling, disc is nothing if not a triumph for him.