Up until recently I had not encountered Anna Fedorova’s playing. But following the Russian invasion of her homeland, her profile received a boost from her activism through a series of benefit concerts that raised, together with friends and colleagues, over €500,000 of humanitarian aid for the victims of the war. She has been touring with the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra, having appeared in the orchestra’s emotional concert at this year’s Proms.

It may be too much to expect her album of Rachmaninov’s Second and Fourth Concertos (whose recording pre-dates the start of the war) to live up to such billing. Not that these are not carefully prepared and accurately executed performances; and there are some sensitive touches in the slower and dreamier sections. But overall they fall short both in excitement and subtlety. Fedorova is clearly sensitive to the idiom but her tempos are earthbound and her phrasing lacks élan and freedom, making a meal of the more demanding sections (such as the main theme of the Second Concerto’s finale) and tending to sound heavy-handed and laboured. It takes just a few seconds of Michelangeli and the Philharmonia in the Fourth Concerto to hear a constant sense of discovery and creation, a magical rapport that the new disc never approaches. With a recessed piano sound and cloudy acoustics, Fedorova has certainly not been served well by the recording. A jumpy edit at 8'49" in the finale of the Second Concerto doesn’t help matters.

The booklet opens with a short statement from the pianist about the war and her activism, and about the continuing relevance of Rachmaninov despite his Russian background. It’s indeed a grim world when musicians have to justify their choice of composers on the grounds of nationality.