Over the last few years, Valery Gergiev's releases on the London Symphony Orchestra's own label have centred upon his cycle of the Mahler symphonies, with rather variable results. But back in the Russian repertory that he knows so well, and to which he responds more vividly than perhaps any other conductor alive today, Gergiev is once again irresistible. He has already recorded Tchaikovsky's Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Symphonies with his other orchestra, from the Mariinsky theatre in St Petersburg, but those performances have nothing like the refinement, excitement and unerring sense of dramatic pacing that he brings to their three predecessors on these recordings from the Barbican in London (the First and Second) and Tonhalle Zürich (the Third).

At his best, Gergiev can transform works that often seem problematic into something compelling and totally coherent. In this set, he does exactly that with the Third, perhaps the least heard of all Tchaikovsky's symphonies, which he not only reveals as a totally convincing reworking of traditional symphonic form, with its contrasting pair of scherzos framing the central slow movement, but links it dramatically with Tchaikovsky's operas, too, prefiguring the world of Eugene Onegin, on which he started work two years later. The performances of the First and Second Symphonies may not be quite so revelatory, but both are full of wonderful touches, of sharply etched detail, vivid colours and tremendous focused energy. Even the finale of the Second, which can sometimes seem to stretch its material too thinly, never seems a moment too long. The LSO's playing is consistently outstanding, too.