With the passage of more than 40 years, some of the force of Yevtushenko’s social conscience poetry has dimmed, at least insofar as its specific targets are concerned. And though the power of Shostakovich’s music lives on, it cannot be expected to give even Russian performers quite the frisson it did in 1962, arising from the knowledge that the Symphony was somehow written for them and that it pushed to the very limits of the socially permissible, if not beyond.

Mariss Jansons and Sergei Aleksashkin perhaps come as close as we have a right to expect, and the well-trained men of the Bavarian Radio Chorus make a brave stab at impersonating the voice of the people. Though he begins the ‘Babi Yar’ and ‘Humour’ sections half a notch too slow for the purposes of real urgency (as does Rostropovich on his deleted Teldec set), Jansons certainly has the feeling for the nerve-centre of each movement, and once in his stride he paces everything superbly.

At certain crunch moments I miss the sheer weight of tone and unanimity of expressive purpose of Russian orchestras of yore (why are the Bavarian bells so discreet at the end of ‘Babi Yar’, for instance?). But I would never complain at hearing so many of Shostakovich’s textures realised, as here, far more cleanly and euphoniously than they ever were in the Soviet era (hear the eloquent tuba-playing in ‘Fears’, for one).

Aleksashkin is among the best of a less than wonderful current crop of Russian basses. For Jansons he sings with a passion born of long experience with a work he has recorded at least twice previously (for Solti and Barshai). His tonal palette may not be the richest or the most varied but he uses it to powerful effect, throwing himself into the text of ‘Humour’, for instance, with such relish that the notes bend (not fatally) under the expressive pressure. He sustains the back-to-back slow movements with great nobility and eloquence.

Russian speakers will probably admire the conscientious enunciation of the chorus yet long for the confidence and directness of native voices. The central movement, ‘At the Store’, goes superbly, bottom Cs and all. But the shouted responses in ‘Humour’ are under- powered, and a particularly disappointing crucial moment is at 10’55” in ‘Babi Yar’, where the chorus returns to a variant of the main refrain just after the Anne Frank episode. No one who has heard any of Kondrashin’s recordings (all currently unavailable) will easily settle for anything less than the denunciatory passion of the singing or the uncompromising militancy of the conducting.

Jansons’s is a performance that accumulates dramatic meaning from movement to movement, and though the recording is fractionally dry-throated, it reveals orchestral detail that I never remember hearing before. All the same, for a ‘modern’ account I would still favour Järvi, for his more urgent tempi, for the more idiomatic singing of his Estonian choir, and for Anatoly Kotscherga’s greater range of tone-colour and wonderful shades of compassion.