This enterprising Chopin programme couples the E minor Concerto with a solo programme including the Bolero, an intriguing if unconvincing rarity and attempt at local colour. The Concerto is taken live from an American concert while the solo items are English studio recordings. There, alas, interest is chilled by performances which, while proficient, are insufficiently personal or engaging. Kern’s first entry in the Concerto is oddly stiff and portentous – unlike, say, Noel Mewton-Wood (Dante, 3/99) who ‘varied the colour, the light and shade so that what can so easily remain passagework acquires the charm of high relief’, as Edward Sackville-West so delightfully put it. Kern’s way with Chopin’s early arabesques and virtuosity remains pedestrian and earthbound. Try 3’00” in the finale where Chopin’s dancing rhythm emerges as merely routine; hardly playing to lift the spirits.

Paradoxically Kern sounds less constricted in the studio but even here she has too few revelations or surprises up her sleeve. There is an ungainly struggle to make something of the waltz immediately following the Bolero’s dizzying introduction, all part of a brusque rather than affectionate response, and although there are moments in both the Fantaisie-impromptu and A flat Polonaise of greater warmth and confidentiality (the central section of the former, the improvisatory return to the principle theme in the latter) these are hardly competitive readings. This is disappointing after Kern’s more musicianly all-Russian recital (5/05), suggesting an uneasy relationship with Chopin. Harmonia Mundi’s sound is constricted, diminishing whatever colour and character the performances may have had.