These recordings were made in the National Concert Hall in Budapest in June and November 2005. It is not a set that immediately fires the imagination, nor is it in all respects a perfectly “finished” production. That said, it contains fine accounts of the elusive Third Concerto and the imperturbably splendid Fifth.

The two early concertos receive disappointing performances. Though Fischer and his Budapest players provide brisk, no-nonsense support, soloist Richard Goode appears to be in the grip of a self-denying ordinance, happy to provide an accurate tally of the notes but not much inclined to report upon them. Narrowness of dynamic and expressive range is complemented by a similar narrowness of dramatic vision. The opening movement development sections – the First with its rich vein of fantasy, the Second with its bold improvisatory mood – go for next to nothing. Nor is there much fire in the belly of either of the two finales, the jesting First or the jousting, hide-and-seek Second.

In the Third Concerto the clouds lift. Here is freshness and attack, real poetry in the first movement development, a recapitulation that matters and a superbly calibrated account of Beethoven’s built-in cadenza. The entire performance put me in mind of a famous old LP version of the concerto that also had Hungarian roots: Annie Fischer’s with Ferenc Fricsay (DG, 2/61 – nla).

In the finale of the Third, there is nothing daemonic. Rather, there is a sense of an uncomplicated dance to the music of time. Richard Goode’s way with the opening of the Fourth Concerto also has a somewhat balletic feel to it. His reading has a gracious, clean-cut quality which deserves a more aurally sensitive, less matter-of-fact accompaniment than it receives here from the Budapest players. In the slow movement, the orchestral summonses are given a strangely militaristic character, less Orpheus confronted by the Furies, more Orpheus up before the RSM.

After which, everything comes right in the Fifth Concerto. This is a straightforward performance of the old school, with clean symphonic lines and classy articulation from the soloist; one of those readings of the Emperor that manages to combine lightness of spirit with a proper sense of heroic endeavour.

The piano sound, dull-toned in the two early concertos, is brighter and more robust in the later works without being absolutely in the first flight of excellence. As to production values, there are too many niggles for comfort. Is the comma before the fortissimo G that ends the Fourth Concerto’s first subject an extraneous gesture by the conductor or a badly managed edit? Whatever the answer, it acts like grit in the shoe.