Rattle and his recording engineers have produced a Katya that sound s magnificent both in its attention to musical detail and in those sudden orchestral climaxes that seem to sweep nature itself into the concert hall...The cast are as strong as you get at present, with the American soprano Amanda Majeski both anxious and determined as Katya, much more than the picked-upon wallf lower we often hear.

The LSO are on tremendous form throughout, and what follows is an unflinching journey into both beauty and darkness, as sensuousness repeatedly collides with incipient violence.

So much of this unsettling, comfortless drama is carried by the orchestra, and Rattle does a masterful job of conveying both the claustrophobia of the environment and the elemental forces of nature which combine to destroy Katya’s sanity. Majeski made for a riveting Katya at Covent Garden back in 2019, and if anything she’s even more compelling here: the voice has taken on extra weight and colour in the intervening four years, and she deploys it with the utmost emotional intelligence throughout.

Rattle is absolutely on fire, drawing from his singers and players musicianship of incredible subtlety and force..Majeski’s Katya is one of the great interpretations of the role, and Katarina Dalayman is a terrifying, unyielding Kabanicha. There is fine support, too, with Magdalena Kozena a sweet-voiced Varvara and Ladislav Elgr her pitch-perfect Kudrjas. A triumph.