In 1968, I was studying for the NSW Higher School Certificate. In those halcyon days the ABC (this was years before FM) broadcasts from the major European festivals were a highlight, and especially in that year, a welcome distraction from what I then regarded as the precocities of Jane Austen, the dystopian bleakness of Albert Camus and the sheer slog of Book 12 of Virgil’s Aeneid.

At that time Karajan’s Euro-glitz imperium was at its zenith at the Salzburg Festival, so it was especially intriguing to hear the London Symphony Orchestra with then Chief Conductor André Previn in Rachmaninov’s Second Symphony, much less widely known then than now, and usually with major disfiguring cuts. I was entranced and have remained so for more than 50 years. 

I’ve come to regard this work as the quintessential “Russian” symphony, a gripping and epic map of the Russian soul through a gamut of emotions suffused with a unique sense of Slavic yearning. I was anxious therefore to hear these performances with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Yannick Nézet-Séguin, as this has traditionally been regarded as “the” Rachmaninov orchestra since...