Benjamin Moser, born in Munich in 1981, serial competition entrant (fifth prize at the 2007 Tchaikovsky), student of Dmitri Bashkirov and Alfred Brendel, has kept a low profile thus far in his career. This rather odd programme stems from his desire to mark ‘the 10th anniversary of my prize at the Tchaikovsky Competition’ with a volume of Russian repertoire, pairing Pictures at an Exhibition with Rachmaninov’s First Sonata. He then discovered Earl Wild’s transcriptions and had second thoughts.

The Mussorgsky is played using the original version – which means several small but significant differences from the more familiar Rimsky-Korsakov edition: ‘Bydło’ starting ff instead of pp with a poco a poco crescendo, for example; ‘Goldenberg und Schmuÿle’ ending with two unison B flats instead of Rimsky’s unison C and B flat. Moser’s is an unflashy performance with a tendency to pull back at the end of phrases; but it is one that, having been more concerned with pianistic textures than storytelling in the early movements, gradually gains in characterisation as it proceeds.

The three Gershwin Preludes lead to three Gershwin songs in their super-virtuoso guise. These are difficult to bring off and Moser, fine pianist that he is, cannot quite exchange his well-trained German upbringing for twinkle-toed Broadway. Best of all are the five Rachmaninov song transcriptions – what stunning examples of the transcriber’s art they are! – in which Moser seems, at last, to relax and soar. ‘Floods of Spring’, taken at a more measured pace than its creator’s benchmark recording, is a sustained 4'27" of pianistic rapture, though I cannot understand why Moser cuts the entire middle section of ‘The Little Island’, surely the most impassioned of Wild’s set and which one day, surely, someone will arrange for piano and orchestra.