Joseph Moog and Kai Adomeit are so well matched that you can hardly tell the pianists apart. In the opening movement of Rachmaninov’s Symphonic Dances, you’ll sometimes hear one of the players push slightly ahead, as Martha Argerich tends to do in her various recorded versions. By contrast, Moog and Adomeit are, as jazz musicians say, in the pocket. Their synchronicity extends to all dynamic hairpins and precisely yet never rigidly matching each other’s marcato articulations. Their central waltz lacks nothing in balance and poise, but I miss the Demidenko/Alexeev recording’s lightness and lilt, or the curvaceous flexibility of Argerich/Freire. Their dazzling navigation of the Allegro vivace finale, however, is nothing less than a musical and technical tour de force. Repeated notes fly back and forth with deadly accuracy and sheer insouciance, while the cross-rhythmic phrases effortlessly line up and soar to the skies. I could only imagine how Moog and Adomeit might sail through the Waltz and Tarantella movements of Rachmaninov’s Suite No 2.

If you want to know why some refer to York Bowen as the British Rachmaninov, look no further than his Op 139, where the theme itself proves far less memorable than the variations it inspires. Moog and Adomeit play Var 1 slower and with less delineated foreground/background textures than Ludmila Berlinskaya and Arthur Ancelle serve up, but the latter toss off Var 4’s unison runs to more carefree effect, and minimise the finale’s cloying grandiosity by breezing through it. Here Moog and Adomeit are relatively heavy and square, yet they deliver the supplest and lithest Var 3 on record.

The duo’s grounded yet sharply sprung rhythms in Medtner’s ‘Russian Round Dance’ yield nothing to catalogue competitors. In the larger-scale ‘Knight Errant’, one might lean towards Demidenko/Alexeev’s slightly swifter basic tempo. Then again, the Moog/Adomeit reading gets closer to Medtner’s quasi-orchestral vision, imbuing the pesante octaves with woodwind-like roundness, and making aural distinctions between regular staccato and ‘quasi-pizzicato’ markings. More from this dynamic duo, please!