Deutsche Grammophon continues to display an erratic recent track record when it comes to recording and promotig young, photogenic pianists. Blessed with phenomenal dexterity and an ebullient personality, Lang Lang (pronounced, I now learn, ‘Lung Lung’) has attracted an enormous amount of publicity, but his dreadful mauling of Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto at the first night of last year’s BBC Proms and this present recital both raise the question of whether his musicianship matches his profile. The CD does at least spare us the ecstatic facial expressions which even Dirk Bogarde in Song Without End would have considered hammy.

The Abegg Variations are tossed off with glittering ease, reminding us of a particular side to Schumann’s character before he realised that he was never going to match Mendelssohn and Henri Herz in the fingerfertigkeit stakes. In both the opening and closing movements of the amiable C major sonata by Haydn, Lang Lang pleasingly underlines the quirky, quickfire wit of the composer, even if the slow movement sags in interest. No matter. So far, so good. The remainder of this well-recorded recital, however, is very much hit and miss. I cannot believe, for instance, that Lang Lang truly enjoys Schubert’s Wanderer Fantasy as a piece of music. The performance is accurate, dutiful, dogged and uninspired. It left me cold. By contrast, Tan Dun’s Eight Memories in Watercolors inspire some memorably atmospheric playing with beautifully graded tones.

Nothing at all of interest happens in the Chopin Nocturne; the Liszt is simply a vehicle for Lang Lang’s astonishing athleticism, and must be among the most vapid and unmusical accounts ever to be heard in Carnegie Hall; Lang Lang even outdoes Horowitz in pulling around Schumann’s Träumerei. The same happens to Liebesträume and, while it was brave to include a comedy duet with his father playing the erhu (I’m all for a bit of fun at a piano recital), a Carnegie Hall solo début is perhaps not the ideal time for cabaret. I should have preferred to have heard the Sousa-Horowitz Stars and Stripes Forever and the J Strauss-Grunfeld Soirée de Vienne which concluded the programme, but these are omitted for some reason. There was room: disc 2 lasts just 29'14".