Krystian Zimerman first recorded the Beethoven concertos with the Vienna Philharmonic in 1989, leading the two early concertos from the keyboard, with orchestral responsibilities for the last three delegated to Leonard Bernstein (11/92). Fast-forward 31 years to the Beethoven semiquincentennial. Last December, Zimerman joined Simon Rattle, the London Symphony Orchestra and a crew from DG at LSO St Luke’s, the orchestra’s rehearsal base where, observing pandemic regulations, including socially distanced seating and protective screens for the musicians, they recorded the cycle reviewed here.

To begin with, happy the soloist who has Rattle and the LSO as collaborators in this repertory. The first-movement expositions of all five concertos are symphonic in their cohesion, brimful of ideas and frame the argument expertly before giving way to the soloist’s lead.

The classical bearing and demeanour of the first two concertos leave plenty of space for Beethoven’s sometimes raucous audacity. Zimerman and Rattle convey the sense that, though Beethoven was entering territory essentially charted by Mozart, he consciously did so as his own man. The particularly sprightly Allegro con brio of the C major First Concerto is a vital breath of fresh air. If the Largo seems rather tightly corseted, with thickened phrases and laboriously tailored seams, redemption arrives in the form of the Rondo. Zimerman’s rhythmic verve lends endless variety to the movement’s figuration, displaying an almost impish pleasure in Beethoven’s fecund imagination. The B flat major Second Concerto, with its crisply articulated outer movements and hymnlike Adagio, might have emerged as the gem of the set were it not for certain inexplicable interpretative misfires. In the Rondo, for instance, the sudden abandonment of tempo at 4'52" is tantamount to an attack of vertigo.

Progressing movement by movement through the three 19th-century concertos could be compared to a journey through a series of vividly contrasted psychological landscapes. From the C minor Third Concerto, here characterised as more gruff than passionate, we enter the sanctum sanctorum of the G major Fourth Concerto and discover at its heart an ambivalent Andante con moto that raises far more questions than it answers. Finally, with the golden radiance of the opening E flat chord of the Emperor, Rattle and his LSO players display their full-dress Viennese military topoi in a sunlit panorama. Unfortunately, the near sub-aquatic sound in the Adagio is one of a few instances that suggest how difficult recording under such physical circumstances must have been. That said, Zimerman’s finest playing of the entire release is in the bounding Rondo.

The pandemic has robbed us of all that a genuine celebration of Beethoven’s 250th anniversary might have been. But the release of seven or eight complete cycles of the piano concertos to mark the occasion, of which this Zimerman/Rattle/LSO collaboration is a proud representative, provides something like compensation.