How good to be able to welcome a super-budget reissue of Evgeni Svetlanov's incandescent 1966 recording with the USSR SO of Rachmaninov's First Symphony so soon after its triumph in my “Collection” article (10/06). Even better, Paul Arden Taylor's latest remastering for Regis has tamed the raw Melodiya sound more successfully than any silver-disc transfer thus far, though an element of roughness remains (the finale's ride to the precipice and anguished epilogue still crumble into a merciless din). If anything, Svetlanov's digital remake of three decades later is even more pungently characterised (on no other version do tears spill quite so readily from the languid waltz at the slow movement's core) but it can't match its predecessor's sense of delirious abandon in the main portion of the finale (the surging second subject takes wing unforgettably both times round), while the tragic force distilled in the symphony's overwhelming closing pages leaves the listener in no doubt of the work's mantle as the true heir to Tchaikovsky's Manfred and Pathétique symphonies.

The coupling is a scarcely less passionate Isle of the Dead from the same year which I'd unhesitatingly place up there alongside riveting versions under the composer himself, Koussevitzky, Reiner and, yes, Michael Gielen (an unsung glory on Intercord - sadly nla). Again the USSR SO, under Svetlanov's supple, acutely perceptive lead, respond with inspiring ardour, and the transfer represents a useful advance on a previous “NoNoise” effort from BMG. All in all, an extremely tempting bargain.