The Tale of the Stone Flower is not exactly top-notch Prokofiev. Its plot is pure fairy-story, for all that Prokofiev’s Soviet biographer, Israel Nestyev, strained to present it as a realistic fable of creative labour. More recently, Daniel Jaffé attempted to unearth an anti-Stalinist subtext in which the malign clerical official, Severyan, becomes a surrogate for the Great Leader himself. Others apparently reinterpret Pavel Bazhov’s source material as a parable of environmental awareness.

Chandos’s painstaking if downbeat essay from David Nice is having none of it. Put together against a background of debilitating illness, political pressures and the detention of Prokofiev’s first wife, it is perhaps inevitable that the ballet should be the least interesting of his Soviet quota. That said, any work by a genius deserves at least an occasional airing and, following the Kirov’s successful staging of a cut text, we have long needed a truly first-rate recording of the complete score to complete the rehabilitation.

The BBC Philharmonic is no stranger to the Russian-Soviet repertoire, but its new principal conductor, the Italian Gianandrea Noseda, enjoys a particular reputation as an interpreter of Prokofiev. This is someone with both Betrothal in a Monastery and War and Peace in his repertoire. A protégé of Valery Gergiev, Noseda here proves himself his own man, refusing to press everything to breaking point, as I was half-expecting. Instead he maintains intensity within a more spacious, romantic conception than Rozhdestvensky’s. The character of a number like the ‘Maiden’s Dance’ (disc 1, track 9) is inevitably transformed if, like me, you’re used to hearing it flash past in less than three minutes rather than Noseda’s 4'21".

While the conductor doesn’t disguise the fact that the score’s perky and unusual orchestration is sometimes more interesting than its melodic substance, much of it recycled from othercompositions, his players make thrilling use of the colouristic opportunities it affords.Everything is exceptionally well-shaped and controlled, with wind soloists in particular given ample opportunity to shine.

What of the competition? Chandos’s long association with Neeme Järvi yielded excerpts rather than a complete recording and Rozhdestvensky’s classic Bolshoi version, ardent certainly but sometimes raw in sonority and painfully out of tune, has once again disappeared from the catalogue. That leaves the German set listed above as an obvious alternative to this new one, but as it spills unnecessarily onto a third disc (albeit selling at mid-price) the contest is an unequal one. The Chandos recording, characteristically big and bold rather than ultra-refined, sets new standards.

If in doubt, try to sample the opening ‘Prologue’ with its strange, metallic trio oftrumpets depicting the Lady of the Copper Mountain. As Nice reminds us, the idea came to Prokofiev fully formed and it is not the only one which recalls the Sixth Symphony quite as much as the more anonymous film score we sometimes seem to have wandered into. Anything less than a warm recommendation would be churlish indeed.