Crowning the very summit of the piano concerto literature are the two examples by Brahms, posing as stern a test of technique, temperament and poetic feeling to the interpreter now as they did when they were composed over a century and a half ago. The urgent, impulsive drama of the First, which propelled Brahms into international standing as a performer as well as a composer, was answered more than 20 years later by the more spaciously conceived Second, often more light-hearted in character yet making even more strenuous demands upon its performers as a fully symphonic concerto.

Those demands are met here by the Italian pianist Vincenzo Maltempo (b.1985), whose recordings of Romantic piano music have won critical superlatives. Of his debut on the label with the notoriously exacting music of Alkan, PianoNews considered Maltempo to be ‘one of the greatest contemporary interpreters of this composer… no other pianist as Maltempo has managed to dominate in a so well thoughtout and orchestral way the enormous difficulties.’ According to Andrew Clements in The Guardian, the album is ‘Exhilarating, demonic, a real revelation’. Four further albums of Alkan’s music followed for the label, as well as the Hungarian Rhapsodies by Liszt and the 12 Etudes d’exécution transcendante op.11 of Lyapunov.

As Maltempo’s first concerto recording, this album is sure to be welcomed by not only his many followers but also all those listeners with their ear to the ground for modern virtuoso pianists. Here he is partnered by the Italian-based Mitteleuropa Orchestra under its principal conductor, Marco Guidarini, who is an experienced opera conductor across Europe and the US.