London’s Philharmonia Orchestra gave Vladimir Ashkenazy his first conducting experience. They’ve remained loyal friends ever since and he’s now their Conductor Laureate. Here, he directs a cracking performance of a highly dynamic work, and draws some wonderfully rich and pungent playing from the orchestra. Symphony No.1 was a disaster at its 1897 premiere and the cause of considerable trauma to Rachmaninov as a result, but there are so many of what we now recognise as the composer’s stylistic fingerprints in this performance.