This double CD set showcases some highly imaginative programming. Few people other than Stravinsky mavens have even heard of his Symphony, let alone can claim familiarity with it. Well, you do now! Vladimir Jurowski (he of the wild Byronic locks) has left the London Philharmonic in fine fettle after a decade as Chief Conductor, if these recording are anything to go by. 

This set is a sort of valedictory album. The first CD contains the Symphony, and I was bemused at how much Stravinsky was indebted to Glazounov: his influence suffuses the expansive and rather lavishly scored work, with the occasional fleeting and, I suppose, inevitable, whiff of Tchaikovsky. This is no mere journeyman’s effort or juvenilia. I found the ‘travelling tune’ Scherzo especially piquant (and also a great candidate for a Guess the Composer quiz). 

The following Scherzo fantastique begins well but soon wears out its welcome and seems almost to run out of steam by comparison. Stravinsky’s setting of Pushkin’s mildly erotic poem The Faun and the Shepherdess, sung delightfully and idiomatically by...