These six – yes, six – Beethoven piano concertos were recorded over a period of years and in different locations. The Fourth and Fifth date to 2004 and the Muziekcentrum Vredenburg in Utrecht; the Third and Sixth (Beethoven’s arrangement of the Violin Concerto) come from 2007 and the Dreieinigkeitskirche in Regensburg; the First and Second followed a year later at the Saline Royale d’Arc-et-Senans.

Last year, when I did a Gramophone Collection comparison of 31 recordings of the Fourth Concerto, I found it a near-insuperable challenge to stick with Arthur Schoonderwoerd’s version with the reduced orchestral ensemble of Cristofori. Listening to it again, the performance is no less difficult to admire or enjoy. It has its roots in speculative performance practice of the day: Schoonderwoerd uses a Johann Fritz Viennese fortepiano from the first decade of the 19th century, and Cristofori’s string section comprises just two violins, two violas, two cellos and double bass. Schoonderwoerd also plays his own cadenzas rather than Beethoven’s. All well and good, but the interpretation itself is so lifeless, so prosaic and apparently lacking in any reasoned plan of pacing. The great intakes of breath before the big unison chords at the start of the Fifth Concerto become irksome on repeated listening and the passages of obviously solo (and wiry) violin-playing lie uneasily with a recorded sound that seems bent on making the orchestral forces appear ampler. Any revelations that might still be lurking in the score about the original balance between the orchestral sonorities and the mellow tone of the fortepiano as opposed to that of the modern grand remain obscure here, and the spectrum of dynamic shading is only rudimentarily explored.

The First, Second and Third Concertos, for which Schoonderwoerd uses a facsimile of an 1800 Anton Walter fortepiano, respond marginally more receptively to this sort of approach, although the range of colour is wan; moreover, details that might enliven the orchestral textures are often glossed over and some of the fortepiano-playing sounds effortful. And the Sixth Concerto? It has its moments.