The problem with Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony is not the famous first movement, but what comes after. The deliberately banal portrayal of what is either the Nazi advance on Leningrad or the spread of Stalin's terror through the Soviet Union is so vivid that its meaning as a depiction of evil is unmistakable. The significance of the other three movements is harder to read.

Some conductors seem at a loss to know how to resolve the problem, and their performances tend to become almost apologetic, adding a hasty blaze of triumphalism to round off the finale. But Valery Gergiev takes a different approach. It seemed almost impossible for him to cap the furious climax he had drawn from the London Symphony Orchestra at the moment in the first movement when the incessantly repeated theme takes over completely. But something was left in reserve, not just for the enigmatic second-movement intermezzo, with its spiky clarinet interjections and lonely bass clarinet solo, but especially in the emotional depths explored in the slow movement, with its Stravinskian echoes and winding Mahlerian string theme.

Played with such conviction and implacable security, the problems of what it all means ceased to be important. There will always be something lopsided about the Seventh, but Gergiev's passion makes it all matter, and compels respect even for music that might seem suspect. Performances as good as this, and as well played as this, with the LSO brass outstanding, are very rare indeed.