Vasily Petrenko rounds off his cycle of Rachmaninov symphonies for Warner (formerly EMI) Classics with this characteristically articulate and highly charged account of the epic First, magnificently played by an orchestra currently at the very top of its game. Composed between 1895 and 1897, the D minor symphony is an extraordinarily ambitious, prodigiously inventive and subtly integrated canvas, whose calamitous St Petersburg world premiere under Glazunov’s baton plunged its gifted young creator into a prolonged state of depression. Tragically, the piece was never heard again during Rachmaninov’s lifetime and only posthumously reconstructed from the surviving orchestral parts.

On the whole, the work’s most perceptive interpreters to date – Svetlanov (USSR SO; Melodiya), de Waart (Rotterdam PO; Philips, 12/79 – nla), Pletnev (DG), Anissimov (Naxos) and Kocsis (BMC) – tend not to deviate that much from the 1947 score. Frustratingly, Petrenko is hardly shy when it comes to tweaking the text, most notably (and, to my ears, deleteriously) adding liberal dollops of percussion throughout. Like Rozhdestvensky on his eccentric live 1990 Moscow PO performance (Revolution – nla), he even throws in tubular bells and a glockenspiel at the height of the slow movement – an aberration of taste all the more inexplicable when the clarinets’ gently swaying waltz leading up to it (so gorgeously embellished by the violins – try from 7'01") is as ravishingly songful and heartbreaking as I can ever recall.

Granted, the coupling is superb, a no-holds-barred reading of the red-blooded symphonic poem Prince Rostislav. To my own way of thinking, however, Petrenko’s questionable ‘improvements’ in the main work do tend to take the gloss off his achievement here – a shame given that the music-making otherwise displays such undeniably strong temperament, architectural grip and considerable emotional clout.