With this expertly transferred and packaged Melodiya reissue it’s the music itself that may be a problem. Rodion Shchedrin (b1932) occupies that difficult middle ground between the established Russian-Soviet masters and his own more overtly rebellious, agonised contemporaries: Schnittke, Gubaidulina, et al. To oversimplify, Shchedrin like Shostakovich chose to work within the Soviet music establishment’s “liberal” wing. A gifted pianist and superb orchestrator, he toyed with aleatoric and serial elements when these were beyond the pale in the Soviet context; however, his versatility has not always been appreciated by Western critics.

The Solemn Overture (1982), a brazen ceremonial in the Tchaikovsky tradition, its aspiring sequences briefly subverted by ethnic drumming, is the kind of patriotic display piece Svetlanov adored and we aren’t supposed to. Other pieces are more adventurous. We kick off with Shchedrin’s familiar crowd-pleaser, the impish Concerto for Orchestra No 1 (1963) variously translated as “Merry Ditties” or, as here, “Naughty Limericks”. Leonard Bernstein took it up and Mikhail Pletnev has since provided probably the crispest recording this music will ever receive (DG, 9/01). That said, Svetlanov conveys its antic spirit with gusto and the spotlit sonics are rather fun. The near-contemporaneous suite from the opera Not Love Alone can seem somewhat pale after this, for all the affection lavished upon it: clarinet solos are eloquent, the buzzsaw brass an acquired taste.

The concert relay of the Second Piano Concerto (1966) could scarcely be more authentic. A frankly experimental efflorescence from the heyday of the composer’s semi-sanctioned modernism, its disruptive switches from updated Prokofiev to groovy jazz to all-purpose avant-gardism still bring one up short. “Contrasts”, the third movement, takes in single notes and chords from the pianist as if he were tuning the instrument and ends with a thunderous orchestral battering. Whatever the score’s ultimate substance, its sheer energy is difficult to resist. That Marc-André Hamelin’s modern alternative, makeweight for an otherwise all-Shostakovich programme (Hyperion, 1/04), feels more sophisticated is not necessarily a good thing in music that is provocative (even tacky?) by design. Or is it just a bag of tricks that has passed its sell-by-date? Over to you.