Chopin’s two concertos provide plenty of virtuoso fodder to fuel Lang Lang’s high-wire facility. To his credit, he consistently channels his rippling fingerwork and instincts for tone colour towards lyrical, poetic ends. His lively and varied keyboard textures highlight inner voices and counterlines without undue exaggeration, and help prevent the slow movements’ broad tempi from dragging. On occasion he labours subtle points, overshooting Chopin’s poco stretto in the E minor First Concerto’s Rondo or playing echoed detached phrases with a buttery legato.

Unlike the skewed balances of his previous concerto releases, piano and orchestra judiciously blend. Perhaps the overly resonant sound partially accounts for his limited dynamic range; compare, for instance, his relatively tame declamatory octaves in the F minor Second Concerto’s slow movement’s central interlude to Argerich’s dramatic intensity (EMI, 4/99). Similarly, the VPO’s disciplined support offers marvellous string work and well profiled first-desk solos (save for the elusive bassoon in the E minor’s Larghetto), yet muddy definition in loud tuttis. The Kupiec/Skrowaczewski collaboration (Oehms Classics) remains preferable for clarity and true soloist/orchestra unaminity, not to mention Argerich for daring inspiration and even more effortless technique. All things considered, this release adds up to Lang Lang’s finest concerto recording since his Rachmaninov Third (6/02).

A disc recorded during the 2005 Van Cliburn Competition featured promising performances from Crystal Prize-winner Sa Chen that piqued my interest. Sad to say, her Chopin concertos do not measure up. In both concertos’ first movements, Chen’s bland fingerwork makes little distinction between Chopin’s melodic foreground and decorative background, and projects everything on the same level. Trills are often too loud in relation to the more important notes in long lines. She applies attention-seeking hold-backs, elongations and accents that detract from the music’s character (the E minor’s Rondo, for example), while, paradoxically, ploughing through sequential episodes whose harmonic masterstrokes might benefit from more pointed inflections. Her heavy-handed, practice-room approach to rapid figurations cannot hold a candle to Argerich’s playful scintillation or Rubinstein’s singing ardour.

However, if your main interest in Chopin’s concertos concerns the orchestra, you’re in luck, for Lawrence Foster is one of the few conductors who takes trouble to make Chopin’s orchestrations sound well. Often-buried countermelodies emerge with shapely profile and character. Indeed, the E minor Romance’s gorgeous bassoon solo seems to engage Chen’s interest: listen to her genuine sense of build and long line in the central climax. I wish I could transplant Pentatone’s vivid engineering onto the Lang Lang release, which is sonically mushier yet musically superior.