Unlike a certain Italian maestro’s Beethoven symphony cycle (Decca, A/11), this new set of concertos has appeared with relatively little fanfare. And yet there are several reasons to shout about it. One is that, besides the usual five concertos, there’s the Choral Fantasy, the Triple, the purported original finale for the B flat Concerto and Howard Shelley’s own reconstruction of the early E flat Piano Concerto, which is receiving its first recording. And then there’s Shelley himself: a pianist whose quiet musicality and unobtrusive virtuosity shine through everything he touches. He directs the Orchestra of Opera North from the keyboard, which must have been quite a feat in the Choral Fantasy, with its additional forces and unorthodox structure. This is one of the set’s greatest successes, with Shelley finding more flexibility in the extraordinary solo part than Aimard, and judging the choral contribution just right so that they never become overbearing. Throughout the set, there’s a humanity to Shelley’s music-making; it’s particularly affecting in the B flat Concerto, which he imbues with warmth as well as wit, qualities also to be found in the readings of Richard Goode and Paul Lewis.

The early E flat Concerto was probably written when Beethoven was 13, and all that we have of it is the keyboard part (extraordinarily for ‘harpsichord or fortepiano’, though unimaginable on the former) plus a few indications of orchestration. Shelley has taken a sensitive approach to reconstructing the orchestral writing, erring on the side of reticence (though the flautist has quite a time of it). What’s striking is how Beethovenian the piece sounds – and what a formidable pianist he must have been even by this stage! If hardly an undiscovered masterpiece, it is a fascinating stepping-stone to the mature concertos.

Shelley is fascinated by the link between the C minor concertos of Mozart and Beethoven, arguing in an illustrated talk that in the Third Concerto Beethoven is engaged in a ‘heated discussion’ with Mozart. Certainly, Shelley’s reading of the Third seems to engage with both past and future, and it’s one of the best things here, with a crisp energy to the solo line but also marvellous moments of reflection, such as the passage towards the end of the first movement where the timpani enters following the piano’s cadenza. And the slow movement balances Classical poise with a judicious delicacy of coloration.

The benefits of directing from the keyboard are evident both in the intimacy and the immediacy of Shelley’s approach; this works particularly potently in No 4, which is very fine (though I wouldn’t relinquish either Gilels or Edwin Fischer, the latter also directing from the keyboard). There’s gentleness but also steel to Shelley’s approach, the drama arising from the notes themselves; he has, in the first oboe, a characterful duetting partner. Lewis is also immensely telling here, especially in the drama of opposites that unfolds during the slow movement, where the BBC Symphony Orchestra sounds altogether mightier than Shelley’s forces. Cellist Tim Hugh shines in the Triple, though I’m less keen on Tasmin Little’s tone; in this work, Thomas Zehetmair, Clemens Hagen and Pierre-Laurent Aimard are a compelling threesome.

The outer movements of the Fifth Concerto are perhaps the only places where I have reservations about Shelley’s approach. A work of such grandly outspoken sentiments surely needs outspoken piano-playing. It’s hard to dismiss the iron-clad certainty of Gilels in the opening peroration (or the thwump of the pizzicato cellos and basses at the start of the slow movement before the Russian’s majestically serene entry) and I have similar reservations about the otherwise exceptional Perahia cycle. Shelley’s forces are lighter, more chamber-musical than either, and his entry in the slow movement has an appealingly intimate feel to it, though it doesn’t quite measure up to Perahia’s rapt beauty.

But, taken as a whole, this is a major new cycle, an important addition not only to the catalogue but also to Shelley’s exceptionally fine discography.