Simon Trpceski, late of EMI, now on Avie, opens his recorded cycle of Rachmaninov’s works for piano and orchestra with the Second and Third concertos, most eloquently partnered by Vasily Petrenko and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic. Both performances show an exemplary clarity and taste, a recreation, as it were, of musical utterances rather than virtuoso warhorses. Yet such unfailing lucidity has limitations as well as virtues and there are many moments when Trpceski sounds emotionally “on autopilot”.

The Second Concerto’s opening is naturally paced, neither perversely fast nor affectedly slow, but you wait in vain for fire and Slavonic angst to replace a cool, generalised proficiency. The dark-hued emotional life of both concertos is viewed from a safe distance and there is too little to rekindle love for these all-Russian masterpieces.

More positively, the Third Concerto is mercifully uncut and Petrenko relishes those moments when he is allowed to shine (the opening of the central Intermezzo). Trpceski chooses, as is now fashionable, the early, outsize cadenza, an unwise choice given his lightweight approach, and overall there is little comparison with tirelessly celebrated recordings by Horowitz (live on APR with Barbirolli in New York), Gilels, Cliburn (live from Moscow on Testament) and Argerich with her unforgettable firestorm finale. Matsuev’s new disc with Gergiev (see above) has a different commitment level with a third movement of punishing weight and velocity (alas, minus its meno mosso variation). But even he cannot compete with the above-mentioned recordings, all of which, in their different ways, are “stewed in Russian juices” (Claudio Cassidy on Gilels’s early performances in America).