Gergiev attracting flak

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Coming to the repertoire from outside the Austro-German tradition, Gergiev is inevitably less attuned to the aesthetic than some of the great Mahler interpreters.

While his characteristically Russian fervour is not actually at odds with Mahler's angst-ridden passion, it twists the neurotic screw in unexpected ways.

You could never say his reading of the Fifth was unengaged or unlived in, but you could certainly find it relentless, occasionally lacking nuance.

The stormy second movement had a febrile intensity that reminded one of Tchaikovsky at his most manic. Then came the real Scherzo, scarcely less driven, while the blistering brass of the finale threatened to blast us all into oblivion.

Gergiev also introduced us to the Fourth Symphony of Nikolai Karetnikov - that rare breed: a Soviet modernist in the Schoenbergian mould.

His 1963 symphony, an uncompromising exercise in atonal rigour, unsurprisingly failed to strike the right chord even in the relative cultural thaw of the Khrushchev years and Karetnikov was heard of no more for over 20 years.

The Fourth Symphony is a powerful work, bracing in its astringency, and Gergiev and the LSO delivered it with due urgency. I hope they will in due course reveal more of this unjustly neglected composer.

LSO/Gergiev's Mahler
Barbican