At the end of 2000, Calliope issued a fascinating CD in which Yakov Kasman and Emmanuel Leducq-Barome were teamed with the Kaliningrad Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra in a programme that included Schnittke’s Concerto for Piano and Strings, Shostakovich’s First Piano Concerto and the so-called Shostakovich Chamber Symphony (arr Barshai). It was not only the extended playing time that set that disc apart, for pianist Yakov Kasman, placed second at the 1997 Van Cliburn Competition, proved himself an artist of real individuality. One sensed that his keyboard pyrotechnics and agogic effect-making might seem external to the substance of more sober music. But, in the racy closing stages of the Shostakovich, he pointed up the vernacular element to hilarious effect. One question remained: was the piano deliberately de-tuned so as to suggest a bar room upright, or had this happened by chance?

Unfortunately we know the answer now. This new collection, in which the protagonists are joined by something calling itself the Moscow State Symphony Orchestra, is cursed by shallow piano sound more or less throughout. In the Concerto, with the instrument placed close and Kasman’s snappy, ringing tone scarcely flattered, the balance effectively minimises any prospect of real dialogue with individual orchestral players (a weedy lot in any case and horribly at sea from 5'30" into the finale).

The idea of coupling the work with some of Prokofiev’s still undervalued solo piano music was an excellent one, particularly given the rarity value of Tales of an old grandmother. Alas, we have another poorly-tuned instrument with an unacceptably brittle treble. That Kasman has the dexterity and the flair to bring off Prokofiev’s showier vignettes is never for a moment in doubt, but, even in ideal conditions, he may be a little fidgety for the composer’s simpler folkish vein. In the Visions, the prankish ‘Ridicolosamento’ (track 13) turns merely petulant and even painful in the confined acoustic. And I certainly don’t like Kasman’s racy ‘Inquieto’ (track 18), faster even than Olli Mustonen’s and dominated by a thumpy left hand. Given the quality of the production, it is perhaps unfair to conclude that Kasman lacks the beauty of tone and sheer patience to bring off this sort of material. That said, Evgeni Koroliov demonstrates a more refined sensibility in his all-Prokofiev anthology and his more sophisticated sonority survives similarly close scrutiny.

Prokofiev has often been described as a brutal pianist. And yet his own account of the Concerto has a softer grain than the legend suggests. You can purchase both it and the earlier of Argerich’s stereo versions for much the same price as this new contender. To cap it all, Calliope’s booklet is strangely disorganised with no English language translation of part of the French text and a track listing gone AWOL somewhere in the middle. An opportunity well and truly lost, for all that this US-based Russian virtuoso remains a pianist to watch.