This has to be the best-sounding Fourth on disc – a vivid sense of acoustic and scale but with thrilling immediacy, too.

Mäkelä has achieved something very special here, bringing freshness to music that has been recorded many times and by many of the conducting greats...The players of the Oslo Philharmonic respond with faultless technical and musical skill, and the Decca engineers have lived up to their reputation for achieving outstanding sound quality, with a dynamic range and soundstage that are essential to this music.

the sheer wildness of the Fourth always seems to be kept on a tight leash. But the account of the Sixth Symphony is beautifully controlled and paced, the Oslo strings radiant as the first movement steadily intensifies, the woodwind fabulously agile in the scherzo second, and the finale a joyous, witty romp.

this mind-blowing Oslo Philharmonic performance…[is] as thrilling for its emotional contradictions as for its pulverising unity of purpose.

Mäkelä’s Oslo Philharmonic strings play with an incredible depth of tone, especially the double basses...Should Shostakovich’s music sound this luxuriant? Vintage Soviet performances tend to be grittier, but bringing out the Mahlerian influences really works here... Impressive stuff.