Volume 3 triumphantly concludes Louis Lortie’s Chandos cycle of Liszt’s works for piano and orchestra. Once again his mastery is as fluent as it is scintillating. Less heart­stopping or intense than his finest rivals in the two concertos (Richter and Zimerman‚ and Argerich in No 1 only) his occasional distance lends enchantment‚ and his aristocratic brilliance brings a special distinction to pages inviting heaviness and theatricality. Listen to him unbending winsomely at 1'24" in the First Concerto or tossing aside the Allegro vivace with an almost winged bravura‚ and at 0'45" in the cadenza from the Second Concerto he shows a poetry and inwardness rarely achieved in such overt showpieces. He does all that is humanly possible with the Third Concerto‚ which received its première in 1990‚ yet even he‚ alive to moments of authentic Lisztian rhetoric‚ can do little to erase one’s sense of music in urgent need of revision. Likewise the Concerto Pathétique‚ judiciously arranged from a variety of sources‚ storms and rants with the sort of self­conscious drama that often came too easily to Liszt; never more so than in the all­guns­blazing Allegro trionfante conclusion. But again‚ the performance is exemplary‚ the recordings of demonstration quality with a sensible rather than spectacular balance‚ and George Pehlivanian and The Hague Residentie Orchestra prove themselves admirable partners‚ even when they are hardly maestoso at the start of the First Concerto. Altogether this has been a most distinguished series.