Spotlit soloist, and the BBC Philharmonic as recorded lacking the ultimate in transparency, range and analysis: this is not what we’ve come to expect of Chandos. In one sense, though, Karen Geoghegan is well placed. The instrument is precisely focused and the fineness of her playing shows her to be a musician of cultivated taste and sensibility. But the contrived balance doesn’t create the impression of an integrated ensemble, of a close give and take between soloist and her partners. The partners are recessed, their sound short of full definition and attack.

Not obscured though are the nicely gauged, sympathetically supportive conducting of Gianandrea Noseda and the accomplished orchestral playing. Geoghegan arrests attention immediately. Technically she is totally secure. The tricky bars at 1'41"-1'48" and 3'59"-4'09" in the first movement of the Mozart, the Polacca of Kreutzer’s Fantasia, the Theme and Variations in Crusell’s Concertinoplus the demands of rapidly tongued staccatos found in all the pieces, are handled with an aplomb that makes light of their manifest difficulties.

Empty flamboyance? Hardly. Geoghegan is also heartfelt in her response to the repose in slow movements such as the Largo of Rossini’s Concerto but primarily Mozart’s Andante ma adagio where her beautifully contoured phrasing adds a touch of tenderness too. And, as in the first movement of this work, presumably she plays her own cadenza. Improvements? Well, if Geoghegan could now refine her playing to include a wider compass of tonal subtleties, she’d be a fully finished artist.