Vasily Petrenko’s versions of Scriabin’s Third and Fourth Symphonies, the Divine Poem and the Poem of Ecstasy, appear at the same time as Valery Gergiev’s recordings of the same two works for LSO Live. Where Gergiev’s performances are taken from the cycle of the symphonies he conducted in the Barbican in spring 2014, Petrenko’s appear to have been made under studio conditions in the Oslo Concert Hall. Perhaps that partly accounts for the difference between them. There is little to choose in quality between the two orchestras – on these discs, the sound of the Oslo Philharmonic is a bit more fulsome and rounded than the brasher style of the London Symphony. There is a sense of something generalised about Gergiev’s performances, however, which contrasts with the alertness and close attention to detail that’s evident in every bar of Petrenko’s. The LSO Poem of Ecstasy is particularly disappointing, sluggish to start with and just noisily emphatic at the climax, whereas everything in the Oslo performances seems to be moving the music forward, making its final destination utterly inevitable. And though Petrenko can’t disguise the longueurs in the first movement of the Third Symphony, he holds the work’s rambling structure together well enough, if without persuading anyone that it’s on the same musical level as its successor.
