In 2007 Naxos issued a set of live performances of all five Beethoven piano concertos stemming from that year’s Bonn Beethoven Competition, featuring a different prizewinner in each work. One of the victors was 20-year-old Igor Levit, whose interpretation of the C major Concerto already displays the immaculate technical control and intelligent musicianship for which he is universally lauded today. Indeed, I suspect that this single-disc reissue is due to Levit’s current prominence.

Following the first-movement ritornello, Levit enters at a slightly faster tempo than that established by Helmut Müller-Brühl, and the ensemble duly falls into line. Levit imbues Beethoven’s bravura passagework with the utmost suppleness, point, wit and astute harmonic inflections. Probably due to competition time limitations, the pianist opts for the shorter of the composer’s two completed first-movement cadenzas. The slow movement is as eloquent and poised as one could wish, while Levit takes special care to articulate the Rondo’s main theme in the manner of grace notes.

The orchestra proves more perfunctory and even tentative at times in the B flat Concerto ritornello. Xiaohan Wang’s fleet fingerwork lacks Levit’s variety of nuance, although he rises to the occasion in the cadenza. I like the Adagio’s gently animated basic tempo more than Wang’s pretty yet rather tinkly, undifferentiated phrasing. However, his ebullient, rabble-rousing Rondo compensates, where his tendency to press ahead is appropriate to the music’s spirit.

While the collective calling-card value of these 2007 Cologne performances has diminished over time, they nevertheless offer a revealing glimpse of Levit’s early star in the making.