This disc showcases Dejan Lazic´ as a Beethovenian, with a live Fourth Concerto captured at the end of a 12-concert tour with the ACO. It’s a luxury that has paid off in terms of their familiarity with each other and the music, with the orchestra minutely responsive to the pianist’s every shift in dynamic and tempo. The orchestral playing is glorious – full of character, especially among the winds, with a balance that isn’t overly string-heavy. They have the heft to make an impact in the big climaxes, combined with a wonderful lightness of touch. And Lazic´ is a classy artist, with a fine range of colour, taut trills and immaculate fingerwork. All, it seems, is well…at least until the first-movement cadenza. Lazic´ has provided his own for both this and the finale and, while I’m all for innovation and experiment, these seem stylistically vague, with hints of Liszt and some rather bizarre modulations. It’s a shame; they’re rather a blot on an otherwise engaging landscape. Two other aspects don’t quite work for me: the dreamily slow tempo of the Andante con moto (so beautifully judged by Paul Lewis), and Lazic´’s tendency to snatch at the outer movements’ chords – which is obviously intentional as the ACO do the same.

Turning to the sonatas, the Moonlight impresses in many respects – the quiet containment of the first movement, and the quicksilver finale. I do find his Allegretto a little careful, beautifully wrought though it is. Others find a perkier wit here – not least Steven Osborne, whose recent recording (pace the Gramophone review) captured so beautifully the sense of communing with the sublime in the opening Adagio sostenuto.

It’s revealing comparing Lazic´’s Op 110 with Brendel’s in his 80th-birthday set (see page 85). There’s much of beauty in the Croatian’s reading – his quality of sound, especially in the quieter regions, remains one of the pleasures of his playing. Yet he doesn’t exert the same hold over the listener – the slow movement lacks the frozen grief of Brendel and Richard Goode. And whereas you find yourself admiring the way Lazic´ articulates the fugue, it doesn’t have the inevitability, the sense of skirting the abyss, that you find in the most profound performances, Brendel’s among them.