Good new CDs of Tchaikovsky symphonies are fairly common. Great ones are rare. Which makes an October 2022 recording of the Fifth as fired into action by Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg under their current music director Aziz Shokhakimov (Warner Classics 5054197538513, release date 25^th August), a firebrand born in Tashkent in 1988, a real find. Shokhakimov made his conducting debut at the age 13 with National Symphony Orchestra of Uzbekistan. Not that you’ll discover those facts – or indeed any others – about Shokhakimov from Warners’ booklet, but no matter, all you need to know becomes downright obvious as soon as you place the CD in the tray and start to listen.

This is a fabulous Tchaik 5, securely placed in the Russian Yevgeny Mravinsky tradition, with superb playing, expressive surges to the string lines, artful rubato, a keen sense of play (5:24 into the first movement), winds sounding vividly in relation to the strings (8:22 into the second movement or 1:29 into the third), tough, emphatic and occasionally balletic Tchaikovsky too with, where necessary, a martial strain (ie the close of the first movement, with its clinching trumpet line). The ‘fate’ interjections in the Andante cantabile slow movement (played truly ‘con alcuna licenza’, ie “ … with some freedom”) will shake you to the core; Shokhakimov allows the tempo to ebb and flow according to the dictates of the movement’s explicit emotional moods. He secures an orchestral tone of great depth, not only in the Symphony, but also in the Romeo & Juliet Fantasy Overture, another blazing performance where the all-important bass drum rarely achieves such a joist-shaking impact.

I frequently paused to repeat this or that passage just for the joy of rehearing it. It’s all so utterly natural, a dignified, noble Fifth, detailed yet unselfconscious and performed without compromise. The main body the finale switches to the fast lane (Mravinsky’s various recordings suggest an obvious parallel, so does Kyrill Petrenko in Berlin), the playing headstrong, seemingly impatient to reach the triumphant coda where a cymbal crash signals certain triumph. Unmarked? Sure, but then if Petrenko can tweak Tchaikovsky’s dynamics (which he sometimes does in his 2020 BPO Fifth, another scorcher) surely Shokhakimov can add a cymbal to the victory parade! And next? I’d love to hear him do the 4^th, Francesca da Rimini, The Voyevoda, The Tempest and maybe Tchaikovsky’s ballet masterpiece The Sleeping Beauty, or at least a substantial chunk of it. Fingers and toes crossed.