London Symphony Orchestra/Valery GergievLSO Live LSO 0688 ****

Sergei V Rachmaninov was born in 1873, just nine years before Stravinsky. But although the two orchestral works here are from the same decade, they sound as though they might be from different eras. Rachmaninov's Symphonic Dances, from 1940, are luxuriantly old-fashioned; Stravinsky's Symphony in Three Movements, written between 1942 and 1945, is bracingly astringent and rhythmically intricate. Valery Gergiev's technicolor approach does to some extent serve to draw the pieces – which the two Russian composers wrote while living in the US – rather closer together than you might expect. The concert programme from which these fascinating performances were taken also included a roughly contemporary work by another displaced European, the Violin Concerto by Arnold Schoenberg. See url.ie/4u5f