Rachmaninov’s four piano concertos are a classic example of the excellent being the enemy of the merely very good. When, in 1917, he came to revise his first youthful concerto (from 1891), the Second and Third Concertos had firmly ensconced themselves in the repertoire and in the affections of the public. The Fourth Concerto, composed in 1926, never had a chance: it had none of the fizz of Gershwin in its jazz-influenced passages and the main theme of its slow movement has a bizarre and unfortunate resemblance to Three blind mice!

There are traces of the dreamy, sentimental, later Rachmaninov in both these works – and Simon Trpceski is excellent throughout – but they are either embryonic or truncated. In the last movement of the First, just as you think they’re about to burst into the BIG tune, the pianist scuttles off in a helter-skelter passage of presto fingerwork.

There is real chemistry between Trpceski and Petrenko here, and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic are on fire. I loved the brass attack in the opening chords of the First Concerto. Both orchestra and soloist are highly affecting in its slow movement. 

I’ve left little room for...