Two recordings featuring CBSO conductor Andris Nelsons prove once again what a musical force he is, writes Christopher Morley.

Following upon my recent review of the Arthaus DVD of Britten’s War Requiem from Coventry Cathedral last May, with CBSO forces under the baton of Andris Nelsons, there are a couple more of the conductor’s recent releases to catch up on.

Britten’s was the First World War. Possibly the greatest work to come out of the Second World War (though let’s not forget the Swiss Honegger, never mind his country’s professional neutralism) is the Seventh Symphony of Shostakovich, subtitled “The Leningrad”, as its first three movements were composed while the composer was fire-watching during the lengthy siege of that city.

Subsequently removed with his family into the safety of the Russian hinterland, Shostakovich completed the final movement, and there was a scratch premiere in the provincial city of Kubishev on March 5, 1942, evacuated players from the Bolshoi Orchestra playing alongside amateurs.

Meanwhile, a microfilm of the score was being smuggled out to the western world, via flights in and out of Persia.

Rival western premieres were given in New York by the NBC Symphony Orchestra under Arturo Toscanini, preceded in London by Sir Henry Wood conducting a radio broadcast with the London Symphony Orchestra, followed up a week later by a Proms performance at the Royal Albert Hall.

This new CD is compiled from accounts of this demanding work given by the CBSO under Andris Nelsons at Symphony Hall on November 10 and 12, 2011, and we can’t help surmising that there is an extra degree of emotional engagement from this conductor whose family had lived under two totalitarian states, Germany and the Soviet Union.

There is an urgent scruff-of-the-neck opening, taut articulation from every orchestral department. Woodwind bring both a satirical edge and pensive reflection.

String phrasing has a poignant lift, and solos from violin and flute (we assume they are Laurence Jackson and Marie-Christine Zupancic, though the sloppy insert notes fail to list the orchestra members) bring expressive interjections.

The famous jackbooting marchpast is fabulously done, snare-drums skirling with stamina, brass eventually roaring, Nelsons building the whole thing to a level which lampoons both Hitler and, subliminally, “Uncle Joe” Stalin.

In performance the subsequent movements can drag with the impression of self-indulgence from the angry composer (a lot of Shostakovich has this effect), but this recording, heard in the comfort of one’s own listening-room, gives the work the justice it possibly deserves.

We in Birmingham must not think we own Nelsons.

He is very much active as a conductor elsewhere, as this 2011 Cologne-based recording of Puccini’s Suor Angelica reminds us.

This one-act opera is the centrepiece of Puccini’s important post-Boheme, Tosca, Madam Butterfly trilogy Il Trittico, which begins with the grippingly macabre Il Tabarro and rapidly goes downhill thereafter.

Suor Angelica is saccharine and mawkish, the stuff of 1930s films with glittering images of the Madonna revealing visions of a deceased young son to his illegitimate mother, who has retreated into a convent and who herself is conveniently about to die.

Can we stand all this?

Yes we can, when the performances are as committed as they are here under Nelsons’ direction, beginning with the expressive and direct playing he draws from the Cologne Radio Symphony Orchestra, with some wonderful interludes interspersing the action.

There is a strong cast here, headed by Andris Nelsons’ wife Kristine Opolais as the tragic Suor Angelica. Hers is a wonderfully warm voice, so right for Puccini, and turning the character into almost a redeemed Madam Butterfly (we remember her Butterfly in the composer’s greatest opera, and she does so much here for one of his lesser ones).

Opolais develops appropriately darker tones (again, properly verismo) as she approaches the confrontation with her Princess Aunt from the world outside the convent (here sung by the always excellent Lioba Braun), from which she emerges touching, but firm.

Vomitageous all of this might strike the cynic, but anyone listening to this account under Nelsons’ engaged baton would surely have tears in their eyes – and then reach back for the acerbic Il Tabarro.

After a judicious pause, this disc is completed with a lively, exuberant account of Puccini’s student-days’ Preludio Sinfonico, charmingly ridden with elements of Grieg and Wagner (what an eclectic experience this young man must have had!), and an exciting portent of so much to come.

Wagner would always remain on Puccini’s palette, not least in La Boheme and Madam Butterfly, and in the working methods of La Fanciulla del West – and it’s about time we saw that opera again.

* Shostakovich Symphony NO 7: CBSO, Nelsons Puccini Suor Angelica: Andris Nelsons