The inter-reliance of keyboard and orchestra creating something ‘positively embedded’ (beyond mere dialogue) represents both the practical and ideological substance of these riveting performances. Riccardo Chailly’s Bach from the Gewandhaus has often referenced a catalogue of styles which don’t always stack up – the ‘Third Way’, as he calls it, where Romantic and historically informed approaches are effectively fused.

An unselfconscious frisson of symphonic timbre and period clarity really does kick these concertos off into some highly distinctive regions. Following the order of five new ‘arrangements’ Bach made for private and public performance (from earlier concertos for violin or oboe, or sinfonias from the cantatas), Chailly’s unlikely role in this self-contained chamber repertoire is one less of conventional direction than shaping the evolving personality of each concerto as it moves from the fantasy of the broad D minor landscape to the expressive distillation par excellence of the F minor vignette.

But it’s the direct and ringing pianism of Ramin Bahrami that defines this unusual collaboration. The figurative and textural traits of the D minor and major concertos find a compelling viscerality, without ever seeming aggressive; the E major is both skipping, serene and, in the last movement, gloriously quixotic. The slow movements are all beautifully moulded, focused and still. Only the outer movements of a restless and over-accentuated A major let the side down. This is where Heinz Holliger’s recent poetic reading on the oboe d’amore (ECM, A/11) truly lifts the heart.

There is something tantalising about the luminous Gewandhaus strings; few modern orchestras can play with such lightness and shape in this music. If restraint is not always a virtue, it is in the matter of long notes where some wise soul has suggested that a gradation of colour through vibrato is a mortal sin. Similarly, a judicious use of the pedal would bring more ‘half-lights’ into Bahrami’s emotional canvas.

Surely there is a ‘Fourth Way’ where these hard-wired deconstructionist tendencies are challenged? However, this is still a remarkably interesting and vitally conceived disc to which I shall return eagerly and admiringly.