Zubin Mehta has had a distinguished, if occasionally uneven career. His tenure with the New York Philharmonic was not one of the orchestra’s more successful appointments. Elsewhere he has done some outstanding work: his conducting of Turandot on Decca with Sutherland is probably the finest on disc, Richard Bonynge observing that Mehta’s scrupulous attention to detail at the recording sessions was remarkable. More recently he led the less famous forces in Valencia in a remarkable Ring Cycle. Now we have this new release from a concert he gave with the IPO in Tel-Aviv in 2007.

From the outset, Dvorák’s Ninth is flabby and untidy, with the IPO’s strings sounding very indifferent. This is surprising, for the one of the IPO’s greatest strengths has always been its famous string section. There is some fine solo woodwind playing in the slow movement and the scherzo clips along nicely. Nonetheless, you don’t have to look far to find superior performances on CD.

The New World Symphony is teamed with Strauss’s Also Sprach Zarathustra, and as couplings go it doesn’t get much stranger than this. What some orchestras can present together in a concert hall may seem incongruous on a recording....