Concerto repertoire appears for the first time in DG’s series of live archival recordings with pianist Gregory Sokolov. In Mozart’s A major Concerto, K488, one has to put up with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra’s emaciated string tone (the anaemic-sounding first-movement second subject, for example), and the diffuse balance in loud tuttis resulting from the slightly distant, overly resonant engineering. Sokolov, however, plays wonderfully, achieving an arresting fusion of vitality and refinement. He participates in the first movement’s opening ritornello and imbues the development section with dynamic inflections that illuminate Mozart’s harmonic surprises. While the celebrated Adagio is arguably too slow for the woodwind soloists to shape their lines beyond ‘make sure you’ve got enough breath support’ (the uncredited bassoonist has particularly prodigious lung power!), it’s hard to resist Sokolov’s pinpoint articulation and hypnotic legato. The pianist comes even more into his own through the Allegro assai, with gorgeous yet stylistically apt tonal gradations and crisply shaded Alberti basses.

Sokolov fans among live broadcast collectors and what used to be called ‘tape traders’ have long considered the pianist’s 1995 Proms performance of the Rachmaninov Third a holy grail, and for good reason. Once past the deceptively sedate opening theme, Sokolov nonchalantly flies, taking the vertiginous passagework in suave stride in the manner of the composer himself and the late Zoltán Kocsis, yet accounting for plenty of buried motifs and inner voices. At the same time, he adjusts to accompany when the orchestra’s concertante passages need to dominate. What is more, Sokolov’s ability to grasp big chords without an iota of either bluster or imbalance allows him to negotiate the composer’s heavier, thicker and, to my mind, inferior alternative cadenza with no apparent effort. If you want to hear rich, intelligently sustained string tone, listen to the Intermezzo’s grippingly sculpted opening, and also notice how the piano’s dramatic entrance logically arises from the preceding music, rather than abruptly interrupting. The finale’s broad rhetorical stretchings all make intrinsic musical sense and never give the impression of a pianist seeking to draw attention to himself. In the coda, incidentally, Sokolov initially forgoes the triplets in favour of Rachmaninov’s difficult eighth-note ossia but reverts to the triplets when the tempo picks up.

Although Sokolov did not directly participate in the accompanying DVD documentary A Conversation That Never Was, one gets to know him via interviews with friends and colleagues, and archival footage that includes scenes from the 1966 Tchaikovsky Competition, which he won at 16. Poetry by the pianist’s late wife Inna Sokolova figures in both the film and the booklet-notes, a lovely and appropriate gesture.